by D. Rus
The assistant station-master reached for the general alarm button but stopped. Biscuit crumbs tumbled out of his wide open mouth.
A snow-covered, weary camel caravan was slowly approaching the station…
The Temple walls were shaking violently. Massive statues fell from the gothic ceilings, finishing off the wounded and injuring the rest. The entire city was trembling. A web of cracks covered the buildings whose strength percentages plummeted frighteningly fast. Misfortunes never come alone; Freetown was slowly but surely turning into a field of ruins.
The outrageously powerful blows warped the astral world. Space rippled and rocked as four goddesses fought in the sky...
The battered Hestia and Fairest One had already lost personal shields and spilled blood. They feared the consequences of what has been done. Jealousy and rage feel good, but not while personal safety is compromised.
The potentially eternal beings had known death and oblivion. They valued their own lives and guarded them with trepidation. That’s why the goddesses were now more concerned with their personal safety. Carefully exchanging magic hits with female insidiousness, they were looking for a chance to leave the fight without losing face.
On a different plane of reality, at a completely different speed, Lloth was chasing her hated daughter. The legendary Moon Blade, dangerous even for a god, was the only thing protecting the Dark Maiden. The fact that Lloth had exhausted herself preparing to conquer the Temple also helped her daughter. Creating an entire army and transporting it from the Halls had seriously depleted the powers of the underground goddess.
But even given all that, summoning the goddess of the good Drow right into Lloth’s clutches was a set-up of epic proportions. And I knew I’d have to answer for it. Chaotic Good was like that, with fists of mithril…
"He-e-elp…" someone moaned in a loud, funereal voice.
Spitting blood and wheezing, I crawled to where the moan had come from, my broken bones crunching on the way. Ruata…
My through-the-roof regeneration barely made up for the blood loss from my torn liver. Everything else healed. I could have really used ten seconds to cast Full Healing. Then I would’ve been as good as new.
Game avatars are no rag dolls running on those stupid ones and zeroes. We had been carefully built, having the anatomy of sentient beings from the fantasy genre with every little detail thoroughly worked out. An entire university of forensic medicine worked to complete the special order which was outside of the expertise of most. And now, many wonderful discoveries awaited the beginning ripper, including everything down to the six vestigial outgrowths on the appendix of a mature ogre…
"First Priest! You promised! Help!"
The terror in the princess’s voice made me crawl faster. If only I had some help myself…No, I couldn’t go on like this. I needed a break.
I fell on the stone tiles and turned over onto my back. I pressed a hand to my liver to lessen the blood loss and to give regeneration a chance to pull my HP bar out of the red sector.
I lay still for about ten seconds, then sat up with a groan. Noticing the hesitating House of Nigth warriors nearby, I waved to them: Help! I am your prince too, by the way.
They gladly ran to the rescue. Standing around with no orders made them uncomfortable and left them feeling useless.
I got up, leaning on their armored shoulders. I felt like I had swallowed a crowbar. My spine didn’t respond to my will at all like it wasn’t even mine. It was unlucky to be mine anyway. After sustaining several divine punches and flying through the Temple, I got really tired of closing injury alert windows.
I wondered where our field doctors were. When you didn’t need them, they were right there, casting some exotic crap on you, upgrading your concentration or some rare result-dependent skill. Healers’ achievements were mostly cumulative, so they avidly searched for wounded soldiers or forced someone to volunteer.
By the way, a secretly cast Eagle Vision was essentially a +9 long-sightedness. And no words can describe how those under the Bass Breath spell goggle their eyes and open their mouths in a ridiculous manner. Many peculiar sensations come with a spell like that…
I patted my ammunition belt. It contained mostly broken glass by now. And they said vials were indestructible.
Feeling for my spell scrolls, I found only dust and rot. The Universe sure had a crazy interest rate on power loaned for miracles.
I heard a noise at the Temple entrance. According to the raid radar, our troops had made it to the gates and attacked the languid spiders from the back. Without the Patriarch and direct encouragement from Lloth, the arachnid army turned into a scattered crowd of dumb aggro-monsters. The instinct to destroy alone isn’t enough to fight a war.
Steel clashed against chitin with booming sounds. Gusts of magic howled furiously. A dozen green markers went out on my minimap. Then one of the first-line tanks – an orc warrior – stuck his head inside through the main entrance. Easily making out my stooping figure in the darkness, he gave a frightening smile and called to his comrades: "Commander’s in there! Get him a healer, now. DoT problem, he’s losing blood!"
I wrinkled my nose. "Better yet, give me a red vial. And break the seal on that Healing scroll, don’t be stingy!"
The orc entered the majestic Temple. The hall quickly filled with battered warriors of the Alliance and a few NPCs. They stared at the fallen defenders of the Temple and took off their helmets at the sight of the shining Altar of the new goddess. Some of the Drow began to tap with their heels, devoting their litte dancing prayer to the Dark Maiden.
"Sorry, Sir, I’m all out," the orc replied. "We’re all out of basic ammo. We made it here thanks to divine backup. These spiders are a plague. They can zero your HP in seconds. I wouldn’t be standing here if it hadn’t been for the Our Cause is Right buff."
"First Priest!" Ruata’s cry of pain and rage drowned out the talkative orc.
Startled, I looked around, trying to find her. She seemed to be in that dense group by the entrance. Healing magic flashed all around it as did staff officer badges. The location’s degree of danger had fallen below 7, and now staff officers started coming in.
Nodding my gratitude to the many healers around me, I shook my body, trying to drive away the unpleasant sensations, and hurried over to the House of Night warriors crowded around their kneeling princess.
The quiet Vet nurse barred my way. She nodded at my blood-stained side, then let her hair down by pulling out a long ribbon of white silk that held her ponytail together.
I gave her my sweetest smile and gently moved the delicate girl aside. "Not now, beautiful. Give me a minute. You can dress my wound later."
Careening like a battleship struck with a torpedo, I finally made it to the group of Drow. Unceremoniously pushing them aside, I saw the prince of the House of Night sprawled out on the floor. So this is whom Lloth ordered to die.
Dozens of elves looked at me with sadness and hope. There were guards of minor ancestral Reapers in the warriors’ hands. The elves had failed to do their duty and now prepared to join their forefathers. A personal guardsman could not outlive his prince for long. And it wasn’t just because of the oath. It was a question of honor which was at the peak of its importance thanks to the programmers’ effort and the faith of the warriors themselves.
"Help…" Ruata said hoarsely, grabbing at the empty space before her. "He mustn’t die! Lloth had an eye on his strong soul and bound it to her Halls!"
The tension made her hands shake. Her fingernails got wrenched out of her slender fingers with a crunching sound. Blood flowed down her forearms, leaving red lines on the delicate chamois of the artifact armor.
The House of Night wizards bustled about helplessly. An exhausted ritualist sat in the middle of a complex pentagram. The hired necromancer was served drinks in expensive goblets. Empty vials and broken seals littered the floor.
None of the known resurrection methods worked, and the casters had to endure Lloth’s attacks.
The Property Mark on the prince’s soul expertly fought back and thwarted all attempts to seize Lloth’s property.
I lowered my head, creasing my brow as I made an effort to see the invisible. Pain shot through my eyes. Blood flowed down my cheeks. Reality roughly altered some of my retinal cones, increasing my range of perception until I could see astral matter.
Everything has its price. Physical objects became dimmer, but the space around me became filled with life. I could now see hordes of incorporeal entities bustling about.
The spirits summoned by shamanistic rituals flashed by non-stop. The elements were rightfully outraged at the wizards for keeping them on a short leash. Souls enslaved by necromancers thrashed about in their cages of dead flesh. Mighty Egregores devoured seas of different emotions from black hatred to blinding pain. The gray-haired ancestral spirits witnessed their descendants’ glorious doings.
And Ruata…Ruata clung to the prince’s soul, preventing it from fulfilling Lloth’s will and going to her Halls to stay there forever.
I kneeled beside her and made an attempt to grab the dissolving soul. But I was on guest privileges; I could look, but couldn’t touch. Performing miracles to break the game algorithms was not an option. I was spent. There wasn’t a drop of energy anywhere in my body, not even in my skull. My poor Spark was barely alive. It cried, begging me to leave it alone and not to take whatever it had left. Even flame has a self-preservation instinct…
I saw the light of a divine being out of the corner of my eye. It was a soft green light of life.
Asclepius had followed the troops here, to the place that was his ideal environment – the battlefield. There were thousands of bleeding warriors here who desperately needed healing.
He traded divine power for human bliss at a highly profitable rate. The god beamed with delight as new energy filled him.
"Asclepius!" I cried, making even the stone gargoyles jump. "Help!"
The god frowned and his cheek twitched. The familiarity of a mortal who had reached the top of the ruling ladder clearly annoyed him. But I had no time for courtesies and obsequious gestures. Ruata was quickly growing weak and the prince’s soul was slipping from her bleeding fingers.
"Return that soul into the body! He mustn’t die!"
Asclepius assessed the situation in one swift glance, then shook his head. "You need a zombie? Ask the necromancers. His flesh is dead and his soul belongs to a different god. Resurrection won’t help, and healing is useless. I’m sorry."
I growled, brimming with fury. "What kind of a healing god are you?! We’re on the lousy third minute of clinical death here! Even our paramedics could easily pull him out!"
The god sulked and his eyes flashed with anger. "How?"
I dug through my memory, searching for everything I had ever heard, read, or seen in movies about first aid. "CPR!" I said as I grabbed the prince’s armor, tearing the magic steel like tinfoil.
Everyone gasped, growing indignant. They hardly saw giving a deceased man CPR as proper healing.
The prince’s Spark blinked with effort, barely able to resist deincarnation.
"Closed-chest cardiac massage until his pulse’s up to a 100, then artificial breathing in between sets," I explained.
The prince’s ribs crunched under my weight, which showed that I was on the right path. I remembered a scene from this endless legal TV series in which the relatives of a revived patient sued the hospital for breaking the old man’s ribs. Sure, who cares that they saved his life? That’s not the point!
The god put a hand on the back of my head, making remembering easier and even enabling me to know things I’ve never seen: handbook pages, chemical formulas, and so on. All Asclepius needed was a hint, a tiny thread which he would grasp to find all the knowledge he needed in reality’s infosphere.
As if injected with a truth serum, I pattered on incessantly: "One milliliter of adrenaline every three minutes, gradually increasing the dose, then hypophamine and atropine. Then a 200 joule defibrillator shock, increase to 400. In case of…"
"Enough!" the god interrupted and roughly pushed me aside. He crouched next to the prince’s body, placed a hand on his chest, and shocked him with something that contained both electricity and magic. The prince’s muscles contracted. His mighty figure arched back, making his armor plates creak and breaking the bracelets on his forearms.
Slicing the patient’s wrist open with his sharp fingernail, Asclepius synthesized some sort of solution of a poisonous green color in his mouth and spat it into the open wound. The god tilted his head and waited for his cure to take effect.
After ten seconds, nothing happened, and he frowned. The god put his other hand on the prince’s chest and administered a series of brief shocks. He bent over the trembling body and breathed into it, filling it with oxygen and divine energy. This patient wouldn’t need any atropine.
The prince drew in a deep breath, then had a fit of coughing and began to thrash, struggling against the warriors who were holding him down. A body without a mind; that’s something I had already seen in Asmodeus’ kingdom. It was a dreadful sight, worse than any mental case.
Asclepius reached for the prince’s soul which was slipping away. Crack! A magical discharge sank into the god’s aura, making him flinch. The Property Mark obeyed no one. Its sole principle of identification was “friend-or-foe.”
The healer was a foe and paid for it. The damaged part of his astral layer disappeared behind turbid foam.
"This is what you’re dragging me into," the god grumbled and bathed the prince’s soul in a stream of clean energy, burning off all the foreign elements. Then the god chopped off Lloth’s covetous threads. The off-line spell modules couldn’t resist a direct divine intervention.
Asclepius listened to something, then shook his head in surprise. "Well I’ll be…It worked."
He lightly clapped his hands, and the dazzlingly clear soul orb promptly entered its physical carrier.
In a second, the prince’s body stopped its seizure-like thrashing. He opened his eyes, looked at all those present with recognition in his eyes, then nodded his thanks to the god. "I am grateful to you for the miracle, Asclepius. I will personally build you a Minor Altar in the citadel of the House of Night. I’ll keep my word even if I have to empty all the artifact stores of my ancestors. I’ll take the brick of Archdemons’ hardened blood, may the Patriarch of the Dark Pantheon forgive me. It is a source of magic clear as a unicorn’s tear. We were able to hide it from the avid inquisitionists of Light. Your altar will also have accumulating stones the size of an emerald dragon’s head. I hope you will sanctify the altar with your presence."
The god smiled with content, nodded favorably and winked spitefully at my solar plexus, where my greedy pig was nearly having a heart attack. Gods can see really deep…
Asclepius rose and rubbed his hands together. "So, any other patients with similar symptoms here? No? And if I find one?"
Noticing my dumbfounded expression, Asclepius gave a joyous horselaugh. He sure learned a lot from digging through my head...I was like an open book to him now, and my knowledge was his. I need to change a few passwords just in case. Also hide a few current transactions and a few secret tabs. Come on, goddammit!
I decided to puzzle the god in revenge. Here’s a raw lemon to wipe that satisfied look off your face.
"Asclepius," I said, "could you look after Eilistraee’s altar until she comes back?"
The god raised his brows in astonishment. "But whom am I to guard it from? The forces of Light? Or..." he looked at me insidiously. "The Dark?"
I made a resolute gesture with my hand. "From all of us!"
Perhaps the Good Chaos would give me credit for this?
The god pensively scratched his head, assessing the situation as he gave me a very serious look. At last, he nodded decidedly. "I accept your request."
Status alert! Your deeds determine your path.
<_untitled_> Pantheon has gained a Name.
It is now called Pantheon of Balance.
By following through with their decisions and being under the patronage of the Great Balance, the gods of this pantheon gain additional Strength.
Now it was my turn to be stupid.
At that moment, we heard Hestia’s triumphant laughter up in the sky along with the choked squeak of the Fairest One. It was pretty clear who was winning.
Asclepius didn’t just stand back. He muttered something under his breath, activating new skills, creating a layer of shields around him and summoning Phantom Guards of outrageously high levels. Some anti-war god he was!
At this point, he owed me big time. Without me he would’ve never stepped upon the path of Strength. He would’ve still been practicing medicine thousands of years from now, treating runny noses and virtual haemorrhoids.
I looked at the prince. Ruata was crying from joy, her face pressed into his chest. I sighed sadly. It is good fish if it were but caught…The Drow had charmed me. And I remembered how she would use her power to pressure me, to tame me like a silly calf and gently lead me to the slaughterhouse.
I caught her husband’s eyes and briefly saluted him as my equal. Live! And do not die again! For I might not be around next time. And I wasn’t willing to risk my Spark again. The poor thing had grown so dim.
I shivered with cold, wrapping my arms around me trying to protect the exhausted Flame of the Creator. I nodded to my officers who were waiting impatiently. "Let’s go, boys. We’ll talk outside."
It was loud out in the Temple yard. The trophy team fussed with the loot, trying to sort and classify it. The rangers and other gatherers were disemboweling spider carcasses, cutting out chitin plates with butchering knives and digging through piles of bluish innards.
A group of staff officers briefly interrogated a warrior who had committed some offence. He was either a rat, or the Our Cause is Right buff had somehow reduced his damage to zero, which was extremely suspicious.