The Destroying Plague

by Dan Sugralinov

  Acid burned my vocal cords. I couldn’t waste any time chatting, so I just hoped that Ed wouldn’t let me down. In vain.

  Crawler got caught in someone’s spell and failed to get out of the impact zone. Then he got Fear cast on him and the effect made him run clean away from the portal. A few moments later, his avatar in the group interface flashed red for the last time, grinned out a skull and turned gray.

  Someone’s leg flashed from the side and I jerked out my hand and grabbed it. Its owner dragged me forward and a little to the side a step or two before he realized someone had grabbed him. The heavy metal toe of a boot struck my chin, wiping out the last of my health. A fraction of a second before that, I activated Ghastly Howl. It didn’t work because of the level difference, so then I set Iggy on the attacker.

  The meteor from Hinterleaf’s Armageddon crashed into the center of the gorge. All color faded; all shadows filled with the blinding light of a nuclear explosion. I was ripped from the ground in unimaginable heat and thrown through the closing portal at an insane speed.

  Chapter 3. Saving Private Crag

  IN BIG DIS, there were a few types of portals.

  The Return Stone ability was given to everyone and could be used once a day. It could be used to return to your bound place. The authorities and the freight guild put up large stationary portals with a fixed route in the cities. Personal ones could be made with skills, like we did, or scrolls. Dimensional mages could use another kind of portal. Anyone could walk through one of those, not just a member of your group or clan. That was the one I’d gotten into.

  I flew into it alive, but I flew out of it dead.

  Player Han Ro dealt you critical damage (Bleeding): 2647!

  Health points: 0/6474.

  You are dead.

  Reviving in 10… 9…

  The death was confirmed at the exit from the portal. That ticking, critical Bleeding finished me off. It occurred to me that if Crag was nearby and could cover me with his talent, I’d have a chance to survive. But it looked like I was out of the talent’s range.

  I’d died with the worst luck, falling face down on my stomach. That meant in the ten seconds before my revival, I had no way to look around and see what was going on. There was also the question of where exactly I’d revive without being bound to anywhere. In the Darant graveyard? That would be bad, and it meant Crag was done for. Or…

  Or just at the nearest graveyard. And that, from what I understood, belonged to Modus and was in their castle.

  Hinterleaf said something nearby.

  “… a very bad idea, Yar!” “You have to understand…” he paused. “Who’s this?”

  “A corpse,” Yary noted, kicking me with the toe of his boot to turn my body over. “It’s that kid Scyth, the one I was telling you about. Captain of the champions of the kids’ Arena this year.”

  “The ones who beat our boys in the final? We’ll deal with him later. Invite him after all this is over…”

  I’d revived where I’d fallen so many times that I was surprised to find myself at another place when I crossed the threshold between worlds. I was in a rear courtyard, between a high wall topped with guards with their backs to me outlined against the dark sky, and a magnificent castle. Its walls seemed to be encrusted with diamonds and it shimmered, reflecting the starlight.

  Death penalty: —3900 experience.

  The air whispered and Iggy revived nearby. Swearing, I recalled my pet. He’d be more of a hindrance than a help here.

  Switching into Stealth, I looked around. Tombstones surrounded the respawn point, most likely as decoration rather than real burial places. A nearby pool reflected the starry night sky and the local moon Geala. I heard splashing and the croaking of frogs coming from the pool. From somewhere far away, barely within hearing, came voices.

  There were several tombs in the small graveyard that were covered in grass and flowers, and right before me stood a beautifully decorated crypt. It looked like a substantial, even unassailable stone structure with neither windows nor doors. Why would Modus have built it? Maybe to revive leaders when the castle was attacked; they might have spare sets of equipment or a hidden tunnel entrance in there that could take someone outside the walls.

  The important thing was that there was nobody around, not counting the guards on the walls. I hid behind the crypt in case they turned, and I started thinking. First, I made sure that Crag was alright. His icon in the group was active, his health full. True, he didn’t answer my message — they might have put a Silence Seal on him.

  A notification flashed up. Seeing that I’d turned up, Crawler wrote that he and Bomber had revived in Kharinza and were heading to the Darant city graveyard to meet Crag and me there if we died. It turned out the preventers had foreseen that possibility too, setting up a perimeter around the graveyard in case the Threat died.

  Crag was nowhere to be seen, and I faced a dilemma: go searching in my own form or in another. The first option seemed risky. If I pulled Toby out with Depths Teleportation, I’d reveal myself and they’d be after me. For now, the preventers didn’t see a threat in me — perhaps Big Po didn’t betray me, otherwise Yary would be using very different words.

  The decision made itself. The voices from afar got louder, and a large group of players appeared from around a corner of the castle. I sprawled out in the grass behind the crypt and watched.

  They walked along the wall and, reaching the stairs down to the basement, they split up. One group stayed at the entrance, the other took Crag inside. I didn’t know why, but Tobias still hadn’t been eliminated. It looked like they were delaying it. He was walking on his own, but some sort of collar glowed on his neck. Maybe it blocked his abilities, I didn’t know.

  Suddenly I realized that I knew nothing at all, and the thought stung bad. I could have far better spent my eight-week ban and the time after, before I left for big Dis, instead of going on dates and moonlit strolls with Tissa.

  Five took Crag into the cellar, and three came back up almost right away. That meant two were left guarding him. The ones that came back up joined the remaining group and ran back. I took on one of their forms.

  Soon they all hid behind the corner — there was something happening there, but I couldn’t see what it was. The sky above the castle on that side suddenly lit up with crimson flashes.

  Nether. Whatever was happening, all would be talking about it tomorrow, and I needed to help out my clanmate.

  I stood up and walked confidently toward the entrance to the cellar. Thankfully, the door, which was set a little below ground, wasn’t locked, and the hinges were oiled. I opened it slightly and slipped inside, finding myself in a poorly lit tunnel that led downwards.

  I walked down the stairs and glanced around the corner. A straight corridor leading off in two directions. There was nobody in the left-hand corridor, but I saw the shadows of two intelligent creatures.

  A few torches along the passageway flickered and smoldered dimly, making the guards’ shadows dance on the walls, and submerging the space itself in half-darkness. Just one torch, the closest to the guards, burned brighter than the others. Thanks to that and my night vision skill, I could make out that Crag’s guards were standing by a closed door. Berstan the bandit and ice mage Kara. Both were above level three hundred. I didn’t doubt that they had advanced control skills.

  I could try to use Lethargy on one of them, but there was a high chance it would have no effect due to the level difference. I could just walk up looking like an ally and take Crag away into the depths. That was the easiest option, and the best decision was often the easiest.

  I checked everything carefully. Health: one hundred percent. Depths Teleportation to Kharinza was off cooldown. My profile showed the forest elf Isanor, a level three hundred and forty-six druid from the Modus clan. I’d approach, sweet talk them, and leave with Crag. It’d take less than a minute.

  I walked out into the corridor and turned right, moving quickly as if in a hurry to report s
omething. Fifty feet from them, Kara shouted to me.

  “Forgot something, Isa?”

  “Yary summons you,” I answered, approaching. “At once! I’ll stand guard.”

  “Did the Alliance decide to attack after all?” Berstan the bandit exclaimed. “Damn it, I knew it! Come on, Kara!”

  I approached quickly. Fifteen feet left to Crag’s cell.

  “Wait,” the mage stopped his partner, grinning.

  He stretched out his hand, palm forward, the space around it condensed and then a stream of frost hit me. I froze stiff at once, but I could still hear Kara talking fast into his signal amulet.

  “Hey, Hinter! “Guess what, we got an attempted kidnapping here! We caught some noob, but he’s a strange one...! Nickname? Scyth… Yeah, right next to ‘threat.’ And you know what? He looked like Isanor! The spitting image! Got it. We’ll wait…”

  The ice mage Kara’s voice got quieter, turning into an unintelligible murmur, and at first, I thought it was because of the frost. It wasn’t just my hearing that went, but my vision too — everything I saw with my hazy sight lit up as if someone had turned up the brightness and contrast to maximum, then broke into blocks and disappeared.

  Spontaneous Divine Revelation activated!

  My heart tried to beat its way out of my chest, even when I realized that everything happening in the corridor was the result of a passive class ability. Jumping back from the entrance to the corridor, I froze on the stairs. I heard the voices of guards in discussion downstairs.

  Suspicions began to form in my head regarding what exactly Divine Revelation protects against. It first activated when I was accused of killing the town drunk Patrick, killed by Atiyakari, a headhunter from Axiom. Judge cannon sentenced me to a trial by battle, and according to the killer and the bogus witness, there was no way out of that.

  The second time was when Big Po infected me, promising that my death would be permanent for the character. Then Snowstorm covered up what he’d done. Several hundred infected and killed, which meant losing their characters, had quickly received soothing messages from the developers. I got the information first-hand; plenty of guys from our school were victims. They didn’t get their characters back in the end, but both their gear and their progress were compensated. Spells had to be leveled up again from nothing, but the perks the developers gave outweighed the drawbacks. Players were even given short-term soulbound artifacts that multiplied the experience they’d earned.

  And now a third activation. Again, predicting that I’d lose my character. Who had something to lose from the death of Scyth and the elimination of a Threat? The Awoken and I, of course, but that’s irrelevant. Snowstorm? Those folks had supported me in everything so far, but they have nothing to do with the Herald class and its skills. That conclusion was clear from the class and ability descriptions and from the anonymous messages from someone from the corporation.

  Which meant that there was only one option more or less possible option: the Sleeping Gods. Most of them were atrophied and almost in a coma, but for Behemoth, I was the only way to get out of the nightmare in which he was stuck. But the question was: who in all the nether were the Sleeping Gods? Really — who?

  All these thoughts ran through my mind in a couple of seconds, but right then wasn’t the best moment to get deeper into them. More importantly, I couldn’t get Crag out. That bright torch above the guards was definitely unusual. It was entirely possible that it was a True Flame or an artifact with the same effect, which would explain why Kara saw through my disguise.

  I didn’t know what to do. Somehow draw the guards away from the torch, run to the cell and leave for the depths? What if the door was locked, and the talent couldn’t pull Crag out? What if there was something that suppressed magic and abilities?

  The little alarm bell within me that had begun to ring softly back in the guest room of the Darant town hall had now turned into a cacophonous warning blare, entreating me to save myself while I had the chance. The cowardly Alex Sheppard, who avoided conflicts and had replaced his childhood friend for the popular among a class of hooligans, shouted selfishly that the alarm was right. I’d been lucky so many times that day. It would be crazy to try my luck again. I doubted that Divine Revelation would save me twice. I didn’t know if the spontaneous ability had a cooldown or not, but no doubt it did, and a long one. Days if not a week.

  Nether… The words of Crawler and Bomber added weight to my doubts. Both of them insisted that I get out myself. Infect and Tissa joined them too — Ed had left Dis for a minute to tell them what was happening. The developers had blocked communication between us and the sandbox, and we didn’t see each other’s messages even in the clan chat.

  That was hard. I remembered what was on the line. And how Tobias behaved toward me, how he almost betrayed the hard-working non-citizen Manny to the city guard for spilling a glass of ale. And I didn’t care.

  I didn’t care for cowardice. I sat on the basement steps and kept thinking feverishly for a way to escape with that damn Tobias ‘Crag’ Asser.

  * * *

  Hearing a dull rumble and cannonfire from siege weapons, I leapt to my feet. The entire building shook, dust falling from the low ceiling.

  Standing up quickly, I rushed out onto the street. The ground beneath my feet shifted, and a humming noise joined the explosions. It grew, everything around vibrated, and then suddenly became very quiet. An opaque defensive dome had surrounded the castle. Like a giant fountain, it streamed upwards from the castle’s central tower and poured out in magic waterfalls around the perimeter, beyond the walls. I could barely see the stars at first through the matter of the portal, then they faded entirely.

  I’d never seen anything like it before. All around the sphere cannonballs, arrows, lightning strikes and fireballs broke up silently as they hit it. Had the Alliance clans abandoned by Modus come to take vengeance?

  I didn’t notice my legs taking me to the main entrance to the castle. It looked like all the clan’s fighting members had gathered there: several hundred players and roughly the same in pets and mounts. Not a one of them below level two hundred.

  They looked at their clan leader. Hinterleaf separated from the group of leading officers and climbed onto a catapult. He came to Dis as an adult with means back when the game’s founding fathers were still alive, and there were under a million players. A year later, Modus was founded.

  The illusion mage’s snow-white mantle shimmered with blinding light when he started talking, and his magically strengthened voice boomed from all directions.

  “Brothers-in-arms! Modus!”

  “Modus!” the crowd shouted in unison, raising clenched fists.

  “Time presses. Beyond the walls stand not only the forces of the Alliance, but also their jackal sidekicks. Our enemies,” Hinterleaf pointed at the closed gates, “are already splitting the loot and distributing our property among themselves. Your property!”

  “They’re done for!” someone shouted from the front rows.

  “Perhaps,” Hinterleaf agreed. “But I believe this is the first time in the clan’s history I haven’t known what to do. The officers are divided, and I have decided that you have the right to know what is happening and which decision we need to take. As you all know, yesterday the Alliance took a class-D Threat in Darant. As planned, the elimination was intended to take place beyond the frontier. I planned to open a portal through which one member of each Alliance clan would travel. But… we were betrayed. It is hard to say who began first, and that no longer matters. The fact is that they treacherously attacked us at the assembly point. If it had been just the dark ones…” the clan leader laughed bitterly. “Our opposition against the Travelers and the other dark ones has too rich and bloody a history to expect anything more. We had a plan B for that outcome. But then our own stabbed us in the back! The Azure Dragons, Excommunicado, the Children of Kratos…”

  “Those dumb rich kids?” a centaur standing nearby asked in surprise, taking off h
is helmet and scratching the back of his hairy head. I was surprised by anyone choosing such a race — controlling six limbs must be difficult. “What beef do they have with us?”

  The backbone of Children of Kratos consisted of rich youths that weren’t above spending their parents’ money on boosts and equipment. It was a strong clan with a rich history, a kind of elite club for citizen children at category C or above. In many ways, they played just for fun and rarely got involved in open battles and conflicts with their equals, let alone anyone stronger.

  I listened to Hinterleaf again, at the same time searching for options and waiting. I knew one thing for sure: something was about to start, and in the ensuing chaos, I’d have a chance to pull Crag out.

  “Alright, I’ll get to the point. We failed to determine the nature of the captured Threat. The boy won’t engage and refuses to talk, but we did learn something. This isn’t confirmed, but it seems like he strengthens the group he’s in. Strengthens it a great deal. Do you understand? With such a partner, and we can’t accept him into the clan for obvious reasons, we will be capable of much. Just imagine it — perhaps with him, we’ll finally be able to break through to the Valley of the Winged Terror or even reach Meaz! The boy must agree, as it will allow him to further develop his potential. We will offer him a share of the loot and a fixed rate for being online…”