The Destroying Plague

by Dan Sugralinov

  I didn’t hear the clap of the portals or notice my clanmates arrive with the mercenaries on the temple steps, so I gasped when Crawler touched my shoulder.

  “We’re here, Scyth. Take the artifact.”

  He extended a black bracelet toward me, so black it swallowed light; fine as a wire, but heavy. I took off my gloves and vambraces and pulled it onto my wrist. The bracelet gripped me, sinking into the skin of my arm.

  Returning my equipment, I put the icon for activating the artifact in a visible spot. You could activate abilities in Dis either mentally or through a visual ‘button press.’ I felt like I could trust Crawler more now — he had every opportunity to take the item for himself and pay for his whole future.

  Crag, Crawler and I went outside so as not to disturb those in prayer. Bomber and the five mercenaries awaited us: a tall troll, a muscular minotaur, a dryad whose green hair floated in the air as if something alive, a centaur with a long spear and a brown-skinned orc. Their level ranged from the dryad at three hundred and sixty to the orc at three hundred and seventy-five. A team assembled by Disgardium itself, based on the fact that all three main factions were represented: the Commonwealth, the Empire and the neutrals.

  Bomber introduced me to the mercenaries. Nodding, the huge fierce orc, covered in scars and with a broken lower fang, took a step toward me and stretched out a hand.

  “My name is Xerozok. Is this everything?” He pointed to the undead beating against the shield. I nodded and he continued. “The job looks trivial: we pacify the lich, the undead will weaken and become easy prey. Or first we will deal with the small ones. We will see. It will be done. You are too weak; you should stay out of this. If you wish to take part in the battle as the client, this must be negotiated and paid for separately. Extra effort will be required to protect you. Your friend,” he nodded toward Bomber, “chose our cheapest deal. That means you can’t expect any loot, and you must stay a safe distance away during the battle and not get involved. If you violate this condition and someone dies, the guild will bear no responsibility. Got it? I advise you think quickly, human, this is a short-term hire and we’re on the clock.”

  “Understood. We accept your conditions, but I have a suggestion. We have to group up.”

  The orc’s thick black brows rose. The dryad snorted. Limping, waving long arms that stretched beneath his knees, the hunchbacked troll approached us. Even so, he was two feet taller than me. Rings decorated his long, fanged face, and a red-dyed mohawk topped his head.

  “If you’re worried about combat experience, don’t,” he said with a thick accent, stretching out his vowels. “Nobody will get any exp for mobs lower level than us. You’ll barely get crumbs even for the lich…”

  “I’m worried about you. My friend Crag and I have divine talents that strengthen all our allies. The important thing is that the enemies attack first, not us. And as the customer, I insist on that. It will lower the risk and make you far stronger.”

  The orc frowned. His imposing lowered again and he nodded. He accepted the group invite and the rest of the star followed. Crawler and Bomber didn’t refuse either, of course. I sighed with relief for the first time since the guardians died — at least I wouldn’t die to a single hit now.

  “There’s more. We already killed one such lich and we’re roughly familiar with its abilities. It can take control of other minds…”

  I gave him a summary of all we knew. Xerozok nodded and spoke hoarsely.

  “Stay behind the barrier.”

  He walked away to his own and the mercenaries conferred for some time. It looked like tanking in their group was the job of the minotaur, shrouded in massive rough plate from head to toe. He had no shield but did have a two-handed sword as broad as a shovel, which astounded the imagination. With a sword like that, you could cut that dryad in half just by stabbing her. Xerozok quietly said something to his team, pointed at the lich’s minions, then at himself. It seemed like he was planning to go first and draw away the undead, so they didn’t get in the way. The minotaur, troll, centaur and dryad were to deal with the lich themselves.

  The mercenaries had no time to finish planning.

  Cracks formed along the barrier, and a heartbeat later it shattered to pieces with a crack. Behemoth’s defensive shield was down. I stopped feeling the Sleeping God’s presence, and an instant later I felt sick — Infection had gotten stronger, and the damage was tolerable only due to the high-level mercenaries in the group. The workers, kobold s and Patrick screamed desperately in the temple, no longer with the divine protection.

  The lich and his undead were running up the temple steps. Toward me.

  “Remain at a safe distance!” the orc roared at us.

  We jumped back and the mercenaries got to it. The dryad whispered a spell and roots sprang out of the ground, immobilizing Shazz. The centaur, standing closest to the enemies, raised his spear and ran through two zombies at once. The orc growled out a few commands and the mercenaries went into battle.

  Feeling my heart thumping, I opened my profile for a second to check: we’d started the battle. Crag’s talent hadn’t activated.

  The orc, crushing skulls with his heavy hammer as he walked, swept the undead off the stairs and descended on them at the foot of the temple in a powerful deadly meteor leap. As the closest to the lich, he took a Sprint to the boss, but halfway there he tripped on some bony hands growing out of the ground and fell. Dead men’s fingers immediately entwined his body, keeping him down. The centaur rushed to the leader’s help: jumping into the advancing mass of the dead, he stove in a couple of rotting chest cavities with his hooves, threw his spear into the lich and started helping Xerozok get up.

  The dryad stood on her tiptoes, stretched out, raised her arms and began to sing in an unfamiliar language. Waves of healing energy emanated from her in circles, hitting both the undead and her group: killing the former and healing the latter. The dryad twirled, slowly moving closer to the enemies. The minotaur towered like a cliff nearby, covering her fragile body.

  Their ally, a troll shaman, broke into a dance without leaving his position, and ghostly copies split off from his body. Moving away from the troll, they built up to a suicidal speed and crashed into the enemies with a crunch.

  A couple of minutes later, three dozen skeletons and zombies had turned into a mass of bones, scraps of rotting flash, severed heads and limbs.

  The lich freed himself from the spear and bound the orc and centaur to the ground, lifted into the air and spread his hands. His crooked fingers fired off streams of plague energy. The skeleton bones began to form into the bodies of Bone Hounds, and the flesh and blood of the zombies gathered into three piles, melded together like mercury and made three Foul Queases. A Plague Vector formed from the remainder of the blood and piles of slime. The lich wasn’t giving up.

  The new mobs were higher level than the last ones. The queases were now at three hundred, the hounds — two hundred and ninety. The minotaur bellowed, shaking the columns of the temple, and drew aggro, but the undead moving toward him obeyed the lich’s silent commands and changed direction toward me. Shazz hadn’t lost hope of killing me. The Destroying Plague really had my number! I physically couldn’t complete his quest, because I was banned, and my guilt was rather in the fact that I planned to sabotage the assault.

  Realizing that the undead hadn’t reacted, the minotaur closed the distance with one long leap, blocking the undead’s path and striking the earth with his giant fist. The earth rolled in waves outward from his strike and paralyzed the mobs. In the meantime, the orc and centaur freed themselves from the dead men’s hands holding them, severing and crushing to bone dust the limbs reaching out of the ground.

  The centaur attacked first, piercing the frozen undead with his spear. Then the orc advanced. The dryad and troll attacked the ink-spot smudges of the Plague Vectors with spells. None of the new mobs died immediately, but a few hits and the first quease was down, then the second and the third. The centaur crush
ed the hounds to dust, and the plague vectors faded to the magic from the dryad and troll. The lich was left alone.

  I prepared myself. During the battle, an idea formed in my mind; to leave the group when the boss’s health got low, then shoot an arrow at him with the Balancer active and a maximum vindication charge. The stored energy should be enough to finish off Shazz and take my share of the experience, and maybe even achievements.

  Having killed all the minions, the mercenaries assembled at the foot of the stairs and went into a combat formation: the tank at the front, the mages at the back covered by the meleers — the warrior orc and the spear-carrying centaur. Crawler was standing nearby.

  “You are thinking the same thing I am?”

  “For sure. We go out when the lich is at half health. Crag’s talent didn’t work anyway. We’ll form our own group and attack with everything we have. The exp calculation system is a mess, so try to hit it at least once.

  “I’ll fire with my crossbow,” Bomber said. “I don’t think Crag or I can get near the boss…”

  In the meantime, the mercenaries were getting stuck into the lich, surrounding him. Shazz span as if in a frying pan, dodging strikes, casting spells, immobilizing and spewing curses. His health slowly but surely fell. He would have already gone down if it weren’t for the fact that he took off into the air as often as his cooldown allowed. He was almost untouchable there except by the mages, and he used the opportunity to regenerate by absorbing dead energy from the defeated mobs.

  Crag estimated the distance to the fight and felt the need to say:

  “I have throwing knives. But I need to get closer, their range is only thirty feet…”

  “It’s time,” Crawler interrupted them. “Leave the group!”

  The mercenaries had managed to pin the boss to the ground — the centaur’s long spear pierced his chest, emerged from his back and thrust into the ground. The lich desperately tried to climb off it, trying to fly up into the air again. The minotaur leapt high into the air and brought his broad sword down on the extended thin neck of the dead spellcaster. It was a one hundred percent crit, but through some miracle, the boss’s head remained on his shoulders. The blade cleaved through the collarbone and took off the left arm.

  To everyone’s surprise, Shazz didn’t fall and expire. On the contrary, this let him free himself and take flight. Raising his arm, the lich span around himself. The long mantle in the shape of an overturned tulip sparked, scraps of cloth tore off, blackened and flew away.

  “Watch out!” Xerozok the orc shouted. “Split up!”

  The minotaur, as the least quick of the lot, failed to make it in time. A scrap of black cloth, like an autumn leaf torn from the branch, gently landed on the tank’s shoulder. His stunning, pain-filled wail carried all through the fort. The scrap of the lich’s mantle snagged on his metal shoulderpad and it melted immediately, flowing away in burning droplets. The stink of burnt flesh filled our nostrils. The tank’s health went down by a third, and the boss’s area of effect spell sped up its action. More and more black flakes about the size of a child’s hand broke free from the mantle and soundlessly span through the air in all directions with a misleading lightness.

  We’d already set up a separate group, summoned our pets and were waiting for our chance to put Bomber under a strike. The legendary ring Zuantewith’s Valor, which absorbed lethal damage, should save him. The warrior would survive, and we’d get Crag’s buff. I was ready to press the Balancer and shoot an arrow charged with vindication. All that remained was to wait for the Grave Storm to end and the lich’s mantle to stop throwing off deadly bombs. The mercenaries came to the same conclusion and amiably retreated to the stairs, waiting for the boss to finish. I saw the centaur trying to interrupt the cast by throwing a chakram[5], but it failed. The disc’s blade just glanced off the spinning lich.

  The last sepulchral piece of cloth landed on Bomber as he walked down the stairs. The warrior’s figure flashed with a magic bubble, which took the deadly damage. Hung survived and immediately returned to us. All our stats had increased by a factor of seventeen, and Shazz had less than quarter health left.

  The boss summoned another forest of dead hands to immobilize the mercenaries, and, paying them no more attention, flew toward us. The lich pierced me with his dead eyes.

  “Run, Scyth!” Bomber shouted. “We’ll hold him!”

  “No! We’re taking this asshole out!” Crawler shouted furiously, losing his self-control. “Come on, Scyth!”

  I didn’t move from where I stood. Slowly, taking careful aim, I pulled back my bowstring, activated the Balancer and shot. The boss’s level fell to mine, which meant that our hope of getting some experience and achievements from might be dashed — he’d die at the entirely mortal level of thirty-nine. But that didn’t matter — the important thing was that the lich’s health had dropped a lot!

  It was as if time slowed: my arrow hung in the air, a fireball flew from Crawler to the lich, bomber’s crossbow trigger was pulled, and Crag already had a throwing knife in the air. Our needlers were rushing to attack too.

  Shazz immediately extended a hand to Crag and, for the first time in the battle, used Subjugate…

  I poured all the vindication I had left into the shot, almost forty thousand. For the level the lich had dropped down to, it should have been more than enough. That wasn’t even counting the already high damage of Explosive Shot.

  The arrow that pierced the lich’s heart flashed and exploded. The flash of fire hid the action of Sleeping Vindication:

  Crawler dealt damage to Cursed Lich Shazz: 1258.

  Health points: 4941 / 56000.

  Bomber dealt damage to Cursed Lich Shazz: 726.

  Health points: 4215 / 56000.

  Crag dealt damage to Cursed Lich Shazz: 1115.

  Health points: 3100 / 56000.

  You dealt critical damage to Cursed Lich Shazz: 49501!

  Health points: 1 / 56000 (46402 absorbed).

  Shazz survived. And I was very familiar with how he did it — the undead curse!

  A strike from the minotaur a few minutes before this had taken off the lich’s hood and bared his bald head covered in liver spots and scabs, and now I could see his evil smirk clear as day. His fine, bloodless lips parted, revealing blackened teeth.

  “The Destroying Plague generously rewards its faithful servants! You know that, don’t you, traitor?”

  Crag, whose nick had turned red to show that he was under the lich’s control, now blocked the stairway, covering the boss from the mercenaries. They’d managed to get away, but neither of our groups were fated to win this battle. The first strike against Crag by the mercenary group turned our clanmate’s talent against us. The effect of the Balancer had ended, Shazz returned to his level and became seventeen times stronger.

  Laughing, with a couple of movements of his hook-like fingers, the lich raised a few undead soldiers at his own level, covered the area around him with a slimy mass of Devouring Plague, which inflicted a deadly debuff, and threw a couple of balls of Grave Worms at the mercenaries. Strengthened by Crag’s talent, the worms nimbly pinwheeled their way into flesh. The massive instant damage and the resulting DoT killed the mercenaries in mere seconds. Even the dryad, pulling out all the stops in her panic to heal the group, couldn’t save her comrades.

  Hearing the call of the Sleeping God, I rushed into the temple and shouted:

  “Everyone logs out of Dis right now! Patrick, Ryg’har, take the tribe to the woods! I’ll distract the lich!”

  Suddenly, my gaze was drawn like a magnet to the droplet of protoplasm remaining in the spot where Behemoth had stood. Listening to the will of my heart, I bowed and touched it. The droplet pulled itself into my finger and I rushed to the exit to draw the lich as far away as possible.

  As I ran out of the temple, I saw Bomber and Crawler die; I saw the needlers, Iggy, Stranger and Baloney, flare up in black flame and collapse into dust.

  I ran around the building
and jumped from the top slab of the temple’s foundation. The lich gave out a triumphant laugh, and a couple of seconds later I saw that my legs were rotting alive and dissolving in bubbling slime.

  This is not the end, Herald, I heard Behemoth whisper. The parasite is very confident, but he has miscalculated…

  The Sleeping God’s voice cut off when I died. Hanging in a great nothingness and twisting in phantom pain, I read the blood-red text hanging in front of the black, utter abyss before me:

  You are dead.

  Infection effect: now that you have died, you have become a vassal of the Destroying Plague.

  Initializing global event: Invasion of the Destroying Plague.

  Character regeneration required.

  Approximate regeneration time: 24 hours.