The War (Play to Live: Book #6)

by D. Rus

  Groups of goblins and low-level dwarves at the foot of the fortress were hastily picking up unattended goodies: archangel feathers, basilisk armor plates, colorful innards of various creatures, and so on. And although these goblins could sort of be considered part of Harlequin’s brigade (disobeying orders, I bet), these dwarves didn’t look like any I’ve ever seen before.

  Everything was a mess. The world was in pieces, and someone would have to sort through this pile of debris and glue it back together…

  My snow leopard’s muzzle emerged from behind the mountain edge. He looked happy yet somewhat offended. Panting, the cub climbed the steep slope, swiftly walked over to me on his chubby paws and head-butted me in the knee.

  I petted the purring cub with delight. ''There’s a clever boy. Sorry we got split up. I forgot to drop anchor and got blown right off the mountain.''

  The Analyst came out of his trance and blinked, changing focus.

  I asked one of the most pressing questions: ''How many of us are left?''

  Widowmaker looked at the mighty ogre in astonishment as the latter respectfully lifted the Fallen One off the ground, then reported: ''Surprisingly many from our Alliance. Seems that all the 17,000 permas made it. There were 30,000 non-perma players online at the time of the disaster. Most got kicked out. Only one in five got sucked into AlterWorld, and many are not happy about it. The Valley looks like a nuthouse: yelling, wailing, and insane laughter.”

  I could only imagine. When I had found out about going perma, I danced with joy, while these people each reacted each in their own way.

  The chaos hadn’t befallen AlterWorld alone. The entire Earth was shaking with cries in different languages…

  …Somewhere in Moscow, a man beat his fists against the capsule he was in until his knuckles bled, begging for a second chance…

  … In the building nextdoor, a little girl scratched on the translucent plastic of her father’s capsule like a kitten. Her broken fingernails left scarlet marks. Biting her lip, she kept repeating: “Daddy, daddy, come out!” But deep inside the child knew; her dad would never come home from work again…

  … A thin man sat on the cold floor of his apartment, staring blankly at the wall. He had taken a risk, staked his all and lost…He had quit his promising job and pawned his apartment for an outrageous interest rate to buy three capsules – a family edition, “Two plus one.” Then in AlterWorld he purchased tons of land for his future Gigantic Fly-Trap plantation. He turned all his funds into in-game gold. And now he sat on the cold floor while the medical blocks of the ''Mom'' and ''Son'' capsules beeped in alarm. ''Deep coma'' was their diagnosis. And the ambulance arrival timer showed nothing but infinity symbols.

  Infinity…No escape…The man slowly rose, kissed the tranquil face of his son through the dull plastic, then dragged his stiff legs to the balcony. Nineteen stories up. It would be enough…

  …In an underground virtual center somewhere in China, the capsules opened one by one, letting out thousands of confused, sluggishly moving people. The sixteen-hour shift was far from over…

  The center’s chief supervisor could see his hair turning gray. The merciless statistical monitor showed that 52,000 operators had lost contact with the server. Another 14,000 were in a deep coma…

  …On that day, the manager of Russia’s emergency service, AI Shoygu-231, launched a defense protocol against a DDoS attack for the first time ever. The AI thought that the hundreds of thousands of calls from subscribers were just that – an attack…

  Closing my eyes for a second, I shook my head. AlterWorld had no anti-depressants. How could we treat nervous breakdowns? An insane wizard is a dangerous thing, a living weapon.

  That made me think of something. I looked hard at Orcus. ''Are we still immortal?''

  ''Yessir!'' he replied with a cheerful smile. ''We’ll live. Some of the Lights are still carrying out their last orders, so there is a bit of fighting still happening here and there. Plenty of corpses and resurrections to go around. There are some glitches in damage calculations. But we’ll take care of it. The analysts are collecting information as we speak.''

  ''Good! Get the on duty portalist over here. Let’s jump to the wall. I want to see what’s left of the Lightsiders.''

  Widowmaker smiled menacingly. ''Not much. Seems both sides now have the same number of soldiers, or warriors, at least. We don’t yet know what’s the situation on their home front. But I imagine they don’t have many people there either. Based on the initial info we received, reality had calculated the meaning of life and personal values of every single individual. Any geek that played for more than eight hours a day had their new permanent address set to AlterWorld. Anyone who just dropped in for some fun after work was pretty much told to go fuck themselves.''

  I shook my head. ''So the Chinese and Koreans must have plenty of people in AlterWorld right now. Asians aren’t just devoted players; they work in the virtual world too. One in three Asian families makes a living that way.''

  Orcus frowned. ''This could become a real problem with time. Most of the golden billion population are lazy, casual players. They must be in the middle of a terrible post-apocalyptic situation right now…''

  ''Leaving in five!'' came the voice of the on duty portalist.

  The portal clapped. Our coordinates instantly changed, and we cussed in unison as we landed on a palisade of gravestones, nearly breaking our legs.

  Sliding over hundreds of graves and maneuvering between dangerously sharp, gigantic piles, we ascended the unusual burial mound.

  The battle was practically over. Those who were looking for their graves occasionally fired a few shots. Brief fights would break out between groups of stealthers whenever they accidentally found one another.

  I looked over the giant cemetery, counting the enemy ensigns fluttering in the wind and portals flashing. ''Looks like we beat off the attack,'' I said, grinning.

  I was right. Only one tenth was left of the original army of a hundred fifty thousand, most of them in nothing but underwear. Two percent were permas, and the rest were those who were devoted heart and soul to the colorful world of might and magic.

  So how many were now in AlterWorld? Two-three million? Considering the Asians, nine million was also plausible. But that meant we were sitting on a mine. It was bound to explode sooner or later. The Chinese would surely expand outside of their own cluster considering that there are white people’s cities with enticing treasures all around only one portal jump away.

  It was a good thing that AlterWorld went perma right when it was evening in the Russian cluster. Eight p.m. was prime time, the peak of gaming activity, further increased by the artificial First Temple Defense and those who tried to stay apolitical but still played.

  But for Americans it had happened early in the morning when few players were online. Poor kittens! We would have to consider them an endangered species now.

  The Lightsider invasion army was left without an external governing body and with drastically lower numbers of fighters. Squadrons of a hundred shrank to ten. Many clans were missing their senior officer personnel. The poor people were finally starting to realize the true scale of the catastrophe and the heap of problems they now faced.

  They had no right to access their armories, treasuries and warehouses themselves. Some clans had lost individuals with access rights to the castle interface, the clan’s automated broker with all the lots, and the means to control external politics and everyday life inside the clan.

  Orcus said exactly what I was thinking: ''Many alliances and clans will be forced to disband. But they’ll lose all virtual stashes and accounts.''

  ''They might lease the castles to allies, then pretend-seize them to restore control,'' the Analyst predicted.

  I nodded. ''Then they’ll scam the auction system by buying items from themselves. These are all feasible solutions. But they’ll still lose time and money and will have plenty of chaos to deal with either way. And we’re about to add to their ch
aos.''

  I looked up at the sky and used my right of Direct Appeal which had been given to me by a certain goddess: ''Hestia! I call upon thee!''

  Chapter Nine

  Near-Earth orbit. Russian space research station World 2.

  The intercom speakers inside the facility were blaring out alarm signals. Red lights blinked. The AI’s soft, calm female voice was repeating the same monotonous words: ''Attention! This is NOT a drill. All astronauts are to put on spacesuits and move to life saving capsules as per the Meteorite Threat protocol. Ninety seconds till mandatory deployment of emergency modules. I repeat, this is NOT a drill.''

  VKS Colonel Sergey Volkov sat at the control panel, performing a dozen urgent tasks at once. He was hurriedly reporting to the RKA Mission Control Center, receiving data from them on the dodging maneuver, and kept an eye on the bleeping near acquisition radar.

  He had no time to figure out where this sudden meteor shower came from and how it entered a geosynchronous orbit. Had NASCOM’s ''Orion'' finally fallen apart? Or maybe this was a deliberate act of sabotage? Our sworn enemies could’ve easily launched a container of gigantic blocks of debris into orbit in order to once again become the dominant power in space.

  But there were discrepancies between the sizes. According to the radar, the cloud of objects was nearly as large as a high-rise. Either that or some joker had launched a few square miles of every astronaut’s favorite gold leaf into orbit.

  ''Sixty seconds till danger zone entry: 82% probability of the station sustaining critical damage. This number is increasing as new objects are detected. The commander is to abandon the bridge and begin the evacuation procedure. Please transfer commanding rights of your space station as specified by situation code ''Flying Dutchman.''''

  Sergey thought he heard genuine melancholy in the AI’s voice. ''Negative,'' he replied, shaking his head. ''We have been on this station since day one. We can’t just abandon it. An extra pair of hands can make a difference between life and death.''

  Glancing at the torn photo of his wife with a mimic panel hoop on her head and a cartridge pouch with the young AI on her belt, he whispered quietly: ''Daughter, we’ll make it. Don’t get cold feet. Is this how your mother and I raised you?''

  The fourteen-year-old AI gave a distinct sob, then yelped through its black boxes. She rewinded her plated wire and replied: ''Yes, we’ll make it, dad…Mom would’ve been proud of us.''

  The station shook as the emergency modules undocked. Their thrusters had to work in an off-design mode to accelerate, burning backup fuel as they transported the crew out of harm’s way.

  The colonel closed the visor on his space helmet and turned to look at the external surveillance monitors. The AI directed the cameras at the nearest large object, fully zoomed in on it, then sent the image to the holographic monitor.

  Sergey blinked in disbelief. He looked out the window as if trying to see the anomaly with his own eyes, then turned to the massive cylinder of composite armor that contained the heart of the station – its AI crystal. ''Is this a joke?''

  ''No, sir. It’s a piece of a fortress wall, 27 feet long, with a mass of about 740 tons. I’m no archaeologist, but it looks like a modern replica made to resemble the architecture of antiquity…Hm…There’s something interesting.''

  The view on the monitor switched to camera 26 located on the station’s rear sector. Most of the objects were catching up to the space station. By outer space standards, they traveled at a snail's pace: 1,200 feet per second.

  The bridge’s main section displayed on the screen was wrapped in a cloud of numerical and textual labels that the computer generated. A giant donjon tower was spinning around it. But the most incredible part was that amidst the castellations was a figure in black velvet. Covered by multiple forcefields, it struggled to stay in place. It had blazing eyes and wore a silver diadem on top of the hood that concealed its face.

  ''Who is that?'' the colonel asked in a hoarse voice as he pulled up the biometrics panel by moving his eyes to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating.

  There was triumph in the AI’s voice. ''According to AI Know-All, there is a 99% chance that we are looking at an Archlich from AlterWorld’s virtual reality!''

  The staff on Earth addressed the colonel again: ''Attention, Sir! The RKA Mission Control Center has received situation codes Invasion and Improbable! We recommend you…''

  Bang! Bang!

  The hand-made granite blocks easily pierced the silicon panels of the solar batteries and the identical-looking heat sinks. They crushed the boron-aluminium composite of the station’s exterior along with the delicate electric insides, then flew out the other side without any noticeable drop in speed or mass.

  The two three-foot-wide holes didn’t look like mortal injuries. But the space station felt that it was dying just like a human shot in the gut. The station’s walls got crushed as the bracing was now utterly destroyed. Pipes and fuel lines leaked technical fluids. The torn wiring sparked and smoked.

  But the colonel paid no attention. His eyes were glued to the window as he stared at the snow-white connecting module ''Union 107.'' The two hollow eye sockets hypnotized him. The skeleton was steadily crawling over the station, a dagger laced with poison in its teeth…

  Bang! A divine portal rent the space, sending gravestones flying and clearing an entire square that reached all the way to Yavanna’s walls.

  Our companions jumped aside. A few slipped in the blood and fell off the ledge as if reinacting a mountain climbing accident. They must’ve regretted not investing enough points into Agility at that moment.

  Hestia was magnificent even though she bore obvious signs of abuse. The perfect creature’s striking beauty contrasted sharply with the dark circles under her eyes and the heavy burns on her scarred arms.

  I ground my teeth. The Sun God was a bastard!

  Hestia gave a sad yet grateful smile, then followed the falling, cussing bodies with her eyes. "My apologies. Ultra-long-range transportation has quite a recoil. We were forced to sit out the war on the edge of Chaos, going insane. The Sun God’s all-seeing eye is hard evade."

  I lifted a brow. "We?"

  The world went dark for an instant, and a shortish, chubby man appeared next to the goddess. He had a vacant look and a confused smile.

  It was Asclepius. He was born a mortal, breast-fed by a dog and raised by a centaur. He received the gift of immortality for his medical achievements. But the gods are fickle; Asclepius’s mother was burned at the stake, and he got killed by Zeus’s lightning bolt.

  Such were the Olympians. The most vile snake pit imaginable...

  “We came together,” Hestia said in a commanding voice and, taking the god of medicine by hand, pulled him closer to her.

  He froze up for a moment, examining my aura with the eager curiosity of an expert, then slightly shook his head. I bet he didn’t like the God Slayer mark. Or was something else bothering him? My collection of titles could’ve made an emperor jealous. As the green-eared Grym liked to say, the small astral creatures avoided me at all costs. Of course, nature didn’t like loneliness, and my high-level aura continually attracted larger beings…

  I gave him a reassuring smile to let him know that I was all right with whatever opinion he formed of me. It was hard for me to keep a poker face though. Yee-haw! Scared another one!

  I respectfully bowed my head to the goddess. "Hestia, I have done as you asked. The rapist is dead and will never again reincarnate in this world!"

  The daughter of Chronos closed her eyes for a moment, trying to conceal her exultation. But a god is not an ant, and divine joy is hard to miss.

  Waves of colorful sparks rolled in every direction. They brushed against the warriors who were staring at the gods and dissolved in their auras.

  Yellow light: ''Happiness at home! Your native home increases regeneration and doubles crafters’ chances of creating a Masterpiece.''

  Red snowflake: ''The fire in your hearth becomes the Hou
se Guard. The longer it burns, the more chances it has of giving birth to a minor salamander.''

  Pink spark: ''Nights with your beloved will become colorful and vibrant. Chances of conceiving a gifted child are tripled.''

  I read the system messages listing the effects of Hestia’s divine grace and raised my brows in amazement. Praised be the goddess of the hearth!

  ''Our agreement is sealed with Fulfilled Vengeance,'' the goddess said in a rich voice. ''As promised, we are leaving the Pantheon of Light which has sullied its name!''

  Status alert! Quarrel in the Pantheon of Light.

  The like-minded powers have failed to get along. The priests of the allied gods are turning their backs on each other.

  Effect 1: 10% penalty on religious rank promotion for all Lightsiders.

  Status alert! A pantheon is splitting up. The world has new borders.

  The tender Hestia and the miracle-working Asclepius have left the snow-white Pantheon of Light and created a new divine abode: <_untitled_>.

  Be inspired with all the good things, sentient beings! Your doings will enable the Pantheon acquire a name.

  Current relationship with forces of Light and forces Darkness: neutral.

  ''Hoorah!!!'' the narrow canyon shook with warriors’ cries. They threw up their helmets. The wizards did the same with their three-cornered hats.

  I smiled happily. This wasn’t a victory, but rather the first step toward it, the preliminary sketch of a huge project. Yet we had reasons to rejoice.

  ''Lights’ invasion forces are leaving our control zones,'' the on duty analyst reported via public chat. Even more good news for the exhausted warriors.

  ''Hail Hestia, Hail Asclepius!'' cried over a thousand voices.

  Flattery can get you everwhere with gods. Maybe the enormous flow of our life force and the precious warmth of our Creator Sparks simply intoxicates them? It had to be so, because the neutral gods shut their eyes with joy like cats who just got an extra serving of milk. Hestia waved her slender hand as if saying ''Come on now, no ovations necessary.'' Asclepius was beaming like a supporting actor who suddenly found himself at the front of the stage under the floodlights.