by Dmitry Bilik
“Hey you, dickheads! Leave him alone!”
One of the louts — a squat skinhead with a yellowed bruise covering his cheekbone — turned to me. Puffing on his cigarette, he looked me over and grinned. “Do you want your teeth rearranged, Mr. Atlas?”
Of course. I’d completely forgotten that Commoners still saw me as a jug-eared wimp. What could have Julia possibly found in me? I knew that girls love with their ears but there had to be something she must have initially seen in me. Never mind. That’s not what I should be thinking about.
I took a step toward him. “How about you watch your own ass?”
Now I’d managed to draw their attention to myself. One of the goons even let go of the Professor’s collar; their leader lowered his head and moved toward me. His sidekicks crowded behind him.
“You’d better say your prayers, stupid,” the leader said.
I didn’t think so. Neither praying nor talking interested me much. I could see that this entry-level bully could easily outreason me using advanced street rhetoric. But when it came to a hand-to-hand, I just might mess his pretty face up a little.
Which was exactly what I got down to doing.
My first blow turned out to be nothing special. I hadn’t punched his lights out but I’d knocked him down nice and proper. I could see he was still conscious. In a moment, he’d recover from the initial shock and get back to his feet. But the three others were unlikely to wait for him.
I have to admit I’d a bit overestimated my skill, thinking that the few sessions with Hunter must have turned me into a top fighter. They hadn’t. I dodged a direct hook only to miss a good kick in the teeth that made my whole jaw ring. Gosh it hurt. Despite all my gaming abilities, an appointment with the dentist was on the cards.
[ ∞ ]
I ducked and punched the second attacker in the groin. Next time he’d know better than use his feet.
The system must have appreciated my elegant solution:
Your Hand-to-Hand Fighting skill has increased to level 8.
Just as I read this, I glimpsed a fist heading for my cheekbone. Instinctively I blocked it with my hand.
Your Blocking skill has increased to level 3.
My opponents immediately punched me in the liver. While I doubled up in pain, I received another blow to the shoulder which made the whole bone sing.
Your Unarmored Combat skill has increased to level 3.
Not that I was very happy to receive this last message. My enemies pummeled me with blows. I had no time to think. In all honesty, I should have rewound time again. Instead, I pointed my hand at the nearest opponent and cast Electric Arc.
Your Destruction skill has increased to level 11.
It was a beauty! The goon flew several feet through the air and hit his head on the tarmac as he fell. The others mechanically stepped back.
“What are you waiting for? Wipe him out!” demanded the leader who’d by then already scrambled back to his feet.
“Nah. He’s got a Taser. It’s not worth it,” replied the goon nearest to me.
“Let’s try a little one-on-one,” I offered, trying to will my pumping heart to slow down.
The leader hesitated, looking at his downed minion. “No, we can’t be bothered. Whatcha starin’ at, morons? Get Bear up. And you… we’re not finished with you yet.”
I grimly watched the three of them leave, dragging their electrically supercharged soldier along. It’s true that we had our fair share of thugs — but the audacity of it! Running the ‘hood in broad daylight! I didn’t like it at all.
“Thank you, Sergei,” the Professor spoke.
I started. I’d forgotten all about him.
“What strange young men,” he added.
“What did they want from you?”
“They wanted to talk to me, I presume. They came over to me and asked me whether I was Russian or not. Then they turned nasty. They said that it was because of the likes of me that Russia was in the shit that it is. They said, good Russians didn’t drink.”
“Sure. Good Russians walk around beating up senior citizens. We need to find out where they’re from.”
“Some sort of trade school, maybe?” he offered.
“Then they’re all from the other end of town. In any case, I’ll look into it. Have a nice evening, sir.”
I walked upstairs to my place completely exhausted, hoping against hope that Bumpkin hadn’t trashed it beyond repair in the few days of my absence.
I opened the door. It just wasn’t my day today. It looked as if someone had kept a rabid dog there all week. All the chairs were tipped over; the kitchen table was covered in a thick layer of grease; all my clothes were strewn around; the wallpaper was torn to shreds.
By the time I walked into the room, nothing would have surprised me. What I saw was a disheveled Bumpkin, his eyes red and swollen with tears.
“Master? Is it really you?”
“Yes, it’s really me,” I said, perching on the edge of the couch.
He grabbed at his head. “Are you alive?!”
“And you decided that something had happened to me, is that it? Is that why this place looks like the last day of Pompeii?”
“Yes, but… No. but…” the house goblin looked completely lost, “I sensed that you’d passed away.”
It was my turn to be surprised. So he’d sensed my being dead, was that it? How very interesting.
“Excuse me?” I said. “Tell me about it.”
“Well, the other day — three days from now — I was making you some cabbage soup. Proper cabbage soup with a nice big fat beef bone. And suddenly it was curtains. I just felt so empty inside. That’s how I knew that you were…”
Three days from now? I did a bit of math. That’d be Tuesday. Probably at the exact moment when I’d died. Which meant that the bond between a house goblin and his master was much stronger than just sharing a household. These were some kind of sacred ties. There was no other way of explaining how he could have possibly sensed my untimely demise across several worlds.
“False alarm,” I told him. “I did die a little bit but not for keeps. So any further destructive orgies are canceled. So I’m afraid, my dear Bumkin, you’re gonna have to clean up now.”
“Master,” he rushed toward me and clung to my stinking clothes. That was a bit embarrassing.
“Okay, okay, stop your nonsense. Everything’s all right now. Let me go and clean up first, then you can wash my clothes.”
“Of course, of course. Right away. I’m gonna rustle you up something to eat first. And I’ll clean up the place real quick,” he started fussing around, speeding about the room like a Duracell bunny.
I staggered into the bathroom, peeled off all my rags, crawled under the shower and worked up a good lather, rubbing my skin red raw with the sponge to wash off the dirt of Purgator. Then I soaped up again and gave myself a good rinse. When I left the bathroom, Bumpkin was busy in the kitchen, humming a tune under his breath.
I listened to my body. I wasn’t hungry at all. Just very sleepy.
I staggered over to the couch, unfolded it and made up the bed. Then I lay down on it, stretched and shuddered with pleasure. Jesus, it felt good. All the worries and concerns of the last few days had blended into one confusing, entangled blur. I yawned and sank into a deep sleep.
I was jolted awake by the insistent ringing of my phone back in the bathroom. It must have been ringing for quite a while. I forced my eyes open. The room was dark; the apartment was quiet. It looked like it was already nighttime.
Still not quite awake, I climbed to my feet and sleep-walked into the bathroom. My phone screen read: Litius.
“Hello,” I slumped onto the toilet seat cover and yawned.
“S-s-sergei? Why did it t-t-take you so long to answer the t-t-telephone? I’ve f-f-found it. I’ve arranged everything. I know where to g-g-get Devil’s Sulfur!”
“Where?”
“In Paris!”
“There’s nowhere any
closer?” I was desperately trying to work out what he was saying as my brain wanted to go back to energy saving mode.
“Give it to me,” I heard Art’s muffled voice. After a couple of seconds, the speaker exploded into her mezzo soprano voice. “Sergei, if you don’t come now, I’m gonna cut your beastman to shreds. He’s been screwing my brains for the last several hours with this sulfur of his.”
“So how does it feel, being screwed with sulfur?”
“Please!”
“Okay, okay, I won’t be long. Do you want me to go straight to Paris or somewhere a bit closer?”
She paused, breathing angrily into the receiver, before she deigned to reply they were in the Community.
I pressed the red button and climbed back to my feet. Was there some kind of a Players’ rights protection society here? Somewhere they dished out health hazard bonuses? If so I was quite ripe to join.
“Bumpkin? Any chance of me grabbing something to eat? I might be off again soon…”
Chapter 7
THEY SAY THAT A CRISIS reveals one’s true face. I tend to agree, with one reservation: you often get to see a person’s true face (or that of any other creature, for that matter) at a moment of inactivity. Waiting can become a tough test for quite a few.
As it turned out, patience wasn’t our beastman’s forte. He reminded me of the donkey in Shrek who kept asking, “Are we there yet? Are we there yet?” Apparently, Arts wasn’t known for her angelic patience either, judging by her very curt and explicit reply to his umpteenth appeal.
By the time of my arrival, the standoff between the two resembled the 1993 Czechoslovakia showdown. They were still sitting at the same table in the Syndicate but facing in opposite directions. It took all of my persuasive powers to make them see reason and shake them out of their mutual grudge. Only when I’d said that Traug’s life depended upon it, they finally put their respective brains in gear.
“So you wanna say that it’s possible to get some sulfur on Paris — or rather, in Lutum?”
“According to your fish-loving cat, yes,” Arts sniggered.
I knew it was only a jibe. She knew better than to doubt Litius’ intellectual prowess. “Wait a sec.”
I went over to the bar and asked for a jug of beer and three clay mugs. I then walked back my place, set the mugs in front of each of us and poured out the beer. Litius took a few catlike laps as was his habit, then downed the whole mug in two gulps.
“Now, what do we know about Devil’s Sulfur?” he began with the air of a university lecturer.
“I don’t doubt you’re gonna tell us in a minute.”
“I am,” he said, cunningly pouring himself another beer without asking. “We all know the myth of Lucifer, the arch father of the Kabirids and their alpha demon…”
“Finally some of the Commoners’ myths seem to make sense here,” I murmured.
“… It’s common knowledge that he had mercury flowing in his veins, and his whole body was made of sulfur…”
“I have a funny feeling that he didn’t die from environmental problems, did he?”
“Will you shut up, please?” Arts said, quite unexpectedly for me. “Let Litius speak.”
Aha, so apparently there were some people unfamiliar with this myth still. I took a sip of my beer and shrugged.
“So all of Lucifer’s direct descendants preserved a part of him in their own bodies. That’s what they call Devil’s Sulfur. It’s indestructible, which is why it’s the only thing left of a Kabirid after their death. The higher the demon is in their hierarchy, the more sulfur he or she drops.”
“Awesome. Now the main bit, please? How come some parts of Kabirids’ bodies ended up in Par- er, in Lutum?”
“That’s easy. Provided you know the history of the worlds and can put two and two together.”
“Which is something you’re very good at. Please keep to the point.”
Litius nodded. “That got me thinking. When was the biggest battle between the Archali and the Kabirids which saw the greatest number of demons slain? That’s when I remembered the event which has a different name in every world it affected. In Elysium they call it the Deposition of the Fallen; in Firoll, Backstabbing Day; and in Purgator, the Death Hour of the Curved Daggers. Here in Cesspit it’s known as the St. Bartholomew’s Massacre.”
“Wait, wait, wait! Wasn’t it when all the Huguenots slaughtered the Catholics?”
He nodded. “Only the other way round. The Catholics massacred the Huguenots. Officially, mind you. What really happened was that the Archali had pitted Catherine de Medici, the queen of France, against the Kabirids. Then again, there were apparently some Purgator documents dating back to that period which mentioned some dark rumors about Catherine being a half-blood. Apparently, her mother had had some angelic meat on the side.”
“Litius! It’s complicated as it is! Can you keep it straight, please?”
“Okay, if you wish. To keep it straight and simple, a few hundred years ago, the Archali started hunting down Kabirids all around the interworld network, including those who’d settled down in Cesspit. Ironically, the majority of them lived in France. Which is why we need to find whatever Kabirid remains we can dig up. All those Players who were killed by the local commoners.”
I shuddered. “So you’re suggesting, all we need to do is go check a few cemeteries, open a few graves and collect the ashes?”
“Not at all,” he hurried to offer the good news. “There’re no cemeteries of that period left in Paris. All the bones were thrown down into the city’s catacombs.”
“Wait a sec. If my memory serves me well, that’s like an infinitillion of graves they emptied down there!”
Arts nodded. “About six million, strewn around an area of almost three thousand acres.”
“That sounds like a lot, don’t you think?”
“That’s why she found him,” Litis glanced at Arts as he poured himself another mug. The bastard! I still hadn’t finished my first one.
I turned to Arts. “Who did you find?”
“Him,” she pointed at a nearby table.
Noticing our stares, a young Archalus began rising from his seat. Arts gave him a barely noticeable shake of the head, and he sat back down.
“What’s that for a feathered wonder?” I asked grimly. I didn’t seem to have any luck with Archali just lately.
“That’s Kafiil. We call him Kaf. He’s a mercenary.”
“So how’s he supposed to help us?”
“That’s easy,” Litius butted in. “The Archali can sense the presence of Kabirids, and vice versa. Dead or alive, doesn’t matter. I've estimated the approximate area where they might be buried. All we need to do is scan it with Kaf and find the sulfur.”
“Talk about the best-laid plans,” I said without taking my eyes off the Archalus.
I couldn’t exactly put my finger on it but I had a bad feeling about him. He was cute, like all those feathered prettyboys. The long black hair made his face appear even more feminine, his arms so skinny they appeared weak. His right wing stuck unnaturally to one side; I could tell it had been broken and knitted incorrectly.
I activated Insight and checked him out again.
Kafiil
???
Renegade
???
“Tell me about him,” I asked Arts, keeping my eyes on him.
“He fought for the Archali but had a problem with his commander, apparently. I didn’t quite get it. He either deserted or they kicked him out, I’m not sure.”
I compared her words with what I’d just seen. “He deserted.”
“That’s how he ended up in Cesspit. He accepts all jobs regardless of the karma. But no hit contracts. He’s not a hitman, take a look.”
I did. I put on the Avatar mask and saw a weak gray haze rising up from him. Which mean he was Dark — or rather, gravitating to the Dark Side. I removed the mask.
“How long do you know him?” I asked Arts.
“I’ve never
had to work with him,” she replied, “I’ve only heard what others say about him. A few of my friends speak well about him.”
All in all, things seemed to gel together pretty well. A renegade Archalus, complete with a puppy face and a broken wing, who took up any mission for a pittance. I knew I should have bought his sob story hook, line and sinker but I kept getting this bad feeling about it.
“I take it, we don’t have a choice, do we?”