Rebirth Online 6

by Michael James Ploof

  I opened a portal to the Redgrass Plains and led my children through. I had decided to leave my guild mates in Haven with a few hundred of my sons, just in case the God of War ended up kicking my ass.

  When we flew through the portal and into the bright sun of the plains, I saw that the angelic army had almost reached the minotaur city. The place was still smoldering from my attack the night before, and it was still in no shape to defend against an attack, let alone one by the God of War.

  I landed beside Trinity, who had gathered the minotaur army together near the north wall. She looked stressed out as hell, but when I landed her face brightened.

  “Oh thank god,” she said and pointed at the approaching army as they flew high above the clouds like a group of fighter jets. “That’s the friggin God of War leading those angels.”

  “I know. Don’t worry, I’ve got this,” I said and opened a portal back to Haven. “But you should probably bounce until I get this under control. It could go badly.”

  She shook her head and crossed her arms. “No way. You appointed me Queen of this land, and I’m not going anywhere.”

  “I like your attitude,” I said with a smile and closed the portal. “Alright, wish me luck.”

  She grabbed the horns and pulled me down to lay a fat kiss on my lips. “Good luck.”

  I gave her a little slap on the ass, spread my wings, and shot into the sky. Krares was guiding his angels in a spiraling pattern down toward the city, but when he saw me, he made a beeline in my direction.

  The God of War was an imposing dude to say the least. He was tall and muscular, with thick silver armor and eyes that glowed with electric light. His chiseled face was weathered and scarred, and gnarled knuckles gripped a Warhammer that looked like it could flatten a small car.

  “Krares!” I said in a booming voice and held up my empty hands. “I come in peace.”

  “Peace?” he said with a cocked brow. “What does the Dark Lord know about peace?”

  I gestured for my sons to wait and glided toward him. He did the same, and the angelic army stopped and hovered behind him. When we faced off, I felt the Throne squirm in my mind.

  Krares looked me up and down, and when he stared into my eyes, I could have sworn that I saw stars and galaxies in his glowing pupils.

  “I see that you have found a powerful minion and clawed your way out of the Underworld once again,” Krares said.

  “Why have you come to my land with this army?” I asked.

  He eyed me angrily. “I am not speaking to you, mortal! I am speaking to my fallen brother.”

  I have no words for you, Krares, said the Throne in my head, and by the way the God of War’s eyes widened, I knew that he had heard the voice as well.

  “I speak for Kregos,” I told Krares.

  “You are a husk, and you will die like your bastard sons!” He cocked back his big hammer and swung for the cheap seats, but my power suddenly surged, and brought up my Fire Shield and stopped the hammer dead.

  A booming retort echoed across the land as we stood locked in battle, and Krares’s eyes widened when he felt my strength.

  “Those are Megulla and Nymphora’s children,” I told Krares. “If you attack me, you attack them as well.”

  “I care not for those bastards,” he said with a growl.

  “You care for your daughters, though, don’t you?”

  He scowled at me, but then he withdrew his hammer.

  “I freed Megulla from the Dark Throne,” I said cautiously. “That has to count for something.”

  “Megulla is not my daughter,” said Krares and pointed at me. “She is his.”

  I looked at my own chest, and his meaning suddenly dawned on me. “Kregos?”

  “He enslaved his own daughter, then he abandoned her when she didn’t fully embrace his power. That is the devil that you have made a deal with. And now you have taken my true daughter from me and sent her to the Underworld. May the gods have mercy on your soul.”

  Krares raised his war hammer, and lightning suddenly erupted from it and hit me in the chest. I growled against the currents of electricity that coursed through me and brought up my Fire Shield. The Warhammer suddenly swung for my head, and I barely ducked under it. I retaliated with a Magic Bolt that hit Krares in the chest and knocked him back ten feet through the air.

  “Wait!” I bellowed. “If you abandon this vendetta against me, I will release Nymphora. She is your true daughter, correct?”

  “I do not make deals with the denizens of darkness,” he growled. “I will tear through the halls of the Underworld, and I will get her out myself.”

  “We both know that you won’t do that, for if you venture to Kregos’s realm, he will devour you.”

  I didn’t know if that was true, but I was hoping that he thought it was.

  “Besides,” I said. “You are the god of war. You must like get off or something when you watch warfare from the heavens, right. Well dude, I’m about to open a can of whoop-ass on this world, and you might enjoy the show.”

  “What is this language that you speak?” he said annoyedly. “Speak plainly.”

  “Alright, here it is. Take my offering, reunite with your daughter, and leave me to wage my war. If you don’t, I’ll kill you and every last one of your angels.”

  “You would dare threaten me?” he said with a scowl.

  “What’s it going to be?” I asked as my fingers twitched beside my sword hilt.

  Krares didn’t strike, he didn’t speak, instead he suddenly threw his head back and began laughing his ass off. I glanced back at my sons uneasily and shrugged.

  “I like you,” he said. “Even if you are my brother’s minion. It is a shame that I must kill you.”

  “Wouldn’t it be better to watch me lead your grandsons into battle?” I said gesturing back at them. “The silver ones are Nymphora’s children, can’t you tell? They’ve got her eyes, see? They are your blood, and they are magnificent warriors. Why not just sit back and enjoy the show? What do you care who wins? You’re all about the warfare, right? Well, I plan on waging a shitload of it.”

  “I cannot allow my brother’s spirit to exist outside of the Underworld,” said Krares. “You may think that you are in control, but you are not. My brother is a trickster. He is the god of deception and deceit, and you are but his latest tool. Through you he shall wage war on the heavens, for he seeks to destroy the heavenly realm and all who inhabit it. He will not stop until the world is reduced to ash.”

  I felt the Throne’s anger stir in me, and a dark shadow suddenly began to creep into my mind. I felt an overwhelming pressure in my head. Kregos was trying to take control of my body like he had before, and I found myself struggling to maintain control.

  Krares saw the change in me, and he clenched the handle of his war hammer and moved away from me.

  “You see? Even now he is trying to take you over,” said Krares.

  “You speak of deception, brother, but it is you who have deceived me!” The words suddenly blurted out of my mouth, but I was not the one who spoke them.”

  I’ve got this under control, Kregos. Get out of my head! I pleaded with the spirit inside me as I felt myself losing control. It was much like before when I had lashed out at Trinity and Frisco. I had no control over my body, and I felt myself being pushed to the back of my mind.

  “Now I shall have my revenge,” said Kregos, and my right hand pulled my black sword from its sheath.

  Don’t do this Kregos! I yelled as I tried to regain control of my limbs and lower the sword.

  Dark power overwhelmed me as I fought the effects of Kregos’s mind numbing attack, but it was no use trying to fight the Throne. He was enraged, and I could feel the need for vengeance. It was pure, unadulterated rage that I felt, and I soon found myself hating Krares. Images of that long-ago battle played in my mind in fragments. I saw Kregos as he had once been, tall, proud, beautiful, and powerful. I saw the look on Krares’s face when he had found his brother in
bed with his wife.

  “Lurisa never loved you,” Kregos said through me. “She feared you above all things. Even now you hold her prisoner in the Tower of Heavenspire, but you cannot hold her forever. You cannot keep us apart forever!”

  “I thought that you had no words for me, brother,” said Krares with a mocking grin.

  The Throne screamed in my mind, and the scream issued out of me. I felt a massive spell forming in my mind, but its intricacies were beyond my comprehension. My hand suddenly shot forward, and a writhing black web of shadow engulfed the God of War.

  Oh shit…

  Krares screamed and pushed back on the spell with one of his own. It was like a tornado of light, and when it hit me, I felt searing pain in every fiber of my body. My silver and golden sons sprang into action when they saw Krares attack me, and thousands of spells streaked past me from behind and hit the God of War.

  “Yes, my children,” I said in a voice that no longer resembled my own. “Kill them all!”

  Krares’s angels shot toward my sons, and soon a marvelous battle was raging in the sky above the Red Plains. Through all the streaking spells and explosions, Krares and I exchanged powerful blows. Kregos was in complete control of me now, and I realized that to fight him was to distract him, but against the God of War, that was only going to get us both killed.

  So I let go and offered my body completely to the Dark Throne.

  Once I stopped fighting Kregos’s influence, the full power of the Dark Throne surged into me, and I felt that I could destroy the whole world with my rage.

  “You have grown weak, brother,” said Kregos as we hovered above the plains locked in battle.

  Krares swing his massive Warhammer, and Kreger stabbed forward with my dark blade. My Fire Shield screamed to life and blocked the hammer, but my blade continued unhindered and sank into the God of War’s stomach.

  Krares howled in pain, and I heard Kregos laughing inside my mind. I was laughing too, and I wanted nothing more than to carve out Krares’s heart and eat it while he watched.

  “Back to the Underworld with you!” Krares screamed and unleashed a spell that hit me like a meteor.

  Crackling lightning engulfed me as the meteor pushed me toward the ground, and I felt Kregos create an energy shield around me. We hit like an asteroid, sending dirt and debris flying into the air, yet the spell kept pushing me down, down, down through the earth.

  I screamed in Kregos’s voice and cast a counter spell that shattered the meteor like spell. When we finally came to a stop, I was left panting and staring up at a long tunnel that led to the surface. A shadow slowly crept over the opening high above me, and I could barely make out Krares staring down at us.

  You can do better than this, cant you? It was my turn to taunt the Throne. If he was going to take over my body, then he needed to step up his game. I thought that you were powerful! You say that you want revenge, then take it!

  My taunting worked, and rage bubbled up from the depths of my mind, mixed with the endless river of Kregos’s wrath, and burst out of me like a spiritual orgasm. Kregos and I both screamed, but this time our voices rang out together. We thrust our arms forward and released some of our pent-up anger, and a powerful shockwave burst out of my body. The ground above me exploded outward as I flew toward the surface, and like molten lava from an erupting volcano I shot into the sky.

  Krares was there waiting, and we collided high above the clouds. I rained massive blows down on Krares with fists strengthened by dark power, and God of War fought back with equal strength. In the midst of our hand to hand combat, the war hammer suddenly appeared and smashed into my face. I reeled back, shaken but not defeated, and I saw Krares turn his attention on my demonic children.

  “Die hell spawn!” he cried and unleashed a spell that shot across the sky and instantly incinerated more than fifty of my sons.

  “No!” I screamed in a demonic voice as I watched my sons die. The wrath that I felt turned into a tempest of dark power, and I felt Kregos summoning the largest Nuclear Thunderclap that I had ever cast.

  Krares saw it coming, and he surrounded himself with an energy shield as the spell streaked through the sky toward him. The explosion consumed Krares and spread out through the sky like storm clouds of pure fire. The angelic army was engulfed in those terrible flames as they continued to expand and hit the Earth. The smoke and debris from the explosion blotted out the sun, leaving the Red Plains in smoldering shadow.

  My sons gathered around me as the mushroom cloud ascended toward the heavens, and I scanned the plains for any sign of life. I spotted Krares laying on the ground, and I knew that victory was near. I flew down to the crater that he had fallen into and landed beside him. But there was still fight in the God of War. He suddenly came alive and swung his hammer, but I caught it with my left hand and tore it from his grip.

  “Goodbye, brother,” I uttered in a voice that reflected both anger and sorrow, then I plunged my blade into his heart.

  “Brother…” Krares uttered weakly as he grabbed ahold of the blade in his chest.

  I twisted it and yanked it back, then I knelt and reached into the glistening wound. With a roar of anguish and wrath I ripped Krares’s heart from his chest and bit it in half with my teeth.

  Krares looked up at me in shock, then his body suddenly disintegrated into black ash.

  Chapter 8

  “It is done. I have been vindicated,” Kregos said through me, and I felt sorrow replace his anger.

  His consciousness slowly receded and relinquished control of my body, and I felt myself regain control. I shook my head and rubbed my temples, and through bleary eyes I surveyed the damage. There was no minotaur city left, and there were no red plains. All that remained of the realm was a smoldering wasteland, and I wondered what had happened to Trinity. Had she died in the explosion? Has she seen how terribly powerful we were and evacuated while she had a chance?

  I looked up and saw my silver and golden sons circling above like carrion birds, and I was thankful that at least they had survived. The realm, however, had not, and I floated high above it, mystified and terrified at the same time. If I could destroy an entire realm, what else could I do?

  Then the realization that I had just defeated the God of War began to set in, and I felt a wide grin spread across my face.

  My smile faded, however, when I thought about how helpless I had been against the influence of the Throne. Kregos had defeated Krares, not me. I was nothing more than a puppet. I had been no more in control of my body than I was back in the real world, and the thought terrified me.

  What if Kregos did that again?

  What if he took me over completely?

  What if next time, I never regained control?

  I summoned my sons to me and opened a portal to Haven, and with one last glance back at the smoldering wasteland I flew through.

  I emerged from the portal high above Haven, and as my sons flew out of the portal, I gazed upon my kingdom. The realization that the Throne could destroy it all with one mighty blast sent shivers up my spine.

  Once all of my demonic sons had emerged, I closed the portal and flew down to the ramparts of Samson Tower. I took the steps down the common room, and to my surprise, Trinity was there with Tweak and Nanaya.

  “Trinity, you’re alright,” I said as I moved toward her.

  She scowled at me and pointed above her head. “I fucking died in that blast; you know.”

  “What, that shouldn’t have happened,” I said as I stopped before her. “I’m sorry Trin. Destructive spells aren’t supposed to hurt allies.”

  “Yeah, well it did, and it killed everything else in the zone,” she said as she tapped on her interface and flung an image up onto the looking glass.

  The image of the smoldering Red Plains came into view, and Tweak gasped.

  “Holy this,” said Nanaya. “You did that?”

  “Not exactly,” I said.

  “What do you mean not exactly?” Trinity ask
ed.

  “Kregos kind of, uh…possessed me. He took control and killed his brother, and it was really him that did that.”

  “Then you admit that you can’t control the Throne,” said Trinity.

  “No, I can. He just got too mad in the face of his brother. I don’t think it will happen again.”

  “Oh, okay, now I feel better,” Trinity said sarcastically.

  “I’m sorry that the spell killed you,” I told her. “That was not my intention.”

  “The spell killed me because Kregos cast it, and apparently he has no allies, because nothing survived that blast.”

  “My sons did,” I told her, and she just shook her head.

  “Whatever, Sam, you aren’t going to admit that you can’t control the Throne. You aren’t going to admit that you are way in over your head. So what’s the point in talking about it at all? You just do whatever you want anyway, and you don’t care what happens to the rest of us.”

  ‘Of course I care what happens to you, Trin. You know that I love you.”

  She rolled her eyes and began to walk away, and my anger rose.

  “I thought we were over this arguing shit!” I yelled after her.

  She stopped abruptly and slowly turned to face me.

  “Sam, I just died and lost a level, and do you know why? because you NUKED AN ENTIRE FUCKING ZONE! Fried it. The whole damn thing. And that doesn’t worry you at all?”

  “I didn’t mean to hurt you, Trin.”

  “That doesn’t fucking matter,” she said with disdain. “All that matters is that you did. Or the Throne did. What’s the difference anyway? That NPC spirit or whatever the hell it is is taking you over, and you don’t even see it.”

  “I see it, alright?” I yelled. “I’m afraid that I might lose control, of course I do. But what other choice do I have?”

  “There is always another way, Sam.”

  This again? The Throne said in my mind. That little blonde bitch is really starting to get on my nerves. Shall I kill her for you?

  “No!” I screamed.

  Trinity frowned at me curiously. “Who are you talking to, the Throne?”