by Grim Martin
All around there are clouds of grey dust in the air that have not yet settled. I am coated in it. The bodies that had been running towards us are all gone, reduced to ashes.
An angelgasm is one of the few things that can kill you prematurely, boot you out of your game before your day zero. Stupid players. They deserved it. Who in their right minds would come after an angel?
And why the hell am I still alive?
The angel is standing some meters away, her back to me. I wonder what the heck she did to save me. The fact that she just bedded me seems unreal. It was so hot. I’m pretty sure no one would ever believe me if I told them.
She looks like she has already forgotten about me though. Apart from the two of us, there is one other body in the room. The mighty warrior.
He is lying on the ground near the tarp where he fell. He is conscious, because he is groaning, but he doesn’t seem able to get up. She is standing over him.
And boy, does she look like an angel now. Before, apart from her halo and the fact that, being immortal, she had no life-remaining hologram, she could have been mistaken for human. She was dressed like one in her tight black clothes.
Angels wear outrageously ornate clothes. They carry staffs of power, or legendary swords, or steel and gold battle axes. They are accompanied by trains of servants. She had come with none of those. Only her halo had told me I was in the presence of an angel.
Her halo had been dimmer then. Now its glow is fiery bright. Her skin has taken on an angry ruby hue. Horns have sprouted on her head, long and deadly sharp. Fearsome black wings jut from her back, and a long barbed tail is slashing the air where there had been no tail before.
Things are writhing at her feet. It is a mass of snakes. They turn from the color of concrete to the color of sand speckled with black, and back again. They make the ground look like it is shifting beneath her.
She crouches down beside the man and searches him. She drags off his armor to feel his underclothes. She must not find what she is looking for because she lets out a furious screech that makes my hair stand on end.
“Where is it?” she screams.
The man is unable to answer, but even from here I can see the proud defiance in his body language. It tells me he would kill her if he could, but he would spit at her first.
She rattles him like an armored doll, as if to shake out an answer. She searches him again, and then she punches the ground in frustration, pounding up a small cloud of dust.
She picks up one of the snakes from near her feet. Now the man makes a sound like he is choking. For all of his magnificent gleaming silver armor that proclaims him a hero, he is scared.
The snake slithers, coiling around her arm. And then suddenly it straightens and turns rigid as a spear. Holding it like a spear, she thrusts it straight into his neck in one swift killing blow.
Blood gushes. The man’s body goes rigid and he judders like he is having a seizure, and then he sags into death. The snake slithers back into the roiling mass at her feet.
She crouches next to him for a while, looking half-defeated herself. Then she takes something out of her pocket.
It is a small gleaming blue gem. One look tells me it contains powerful magic. She puts it down carefully on the ground and then gets to her feet. She places her heel on top of it, as if to smash it.
I must have made a sound because she whirls around to face me. She seems shocked to see me alive. Her expression, which a moment ago had seemed both relieved and tired, now turns furious.
She is on me in a second. She grabs me by the throat, her hand tightening like a noose.
“What are you?” she snarls. “Angelborn?”
I blink at her in surprise. Didn’t she save me? The word angelborn pierces the fog of shock in my head.
Angels are all female. The angelborn are what they call the mortal male children born of angels. Only the strongest among the angelborn can survive the blast of an angelgasm. The armored warrior must have been one.
She thinks I am one.
I shake my head, unable to speak with my air supply cut off. The angelborn are sims. Powerful ones, but nevertheless, they exist only within the game. I am no sim.
“Who sent you?” she demands.
The pressure of her hand on my throat tightens as a threat, and then eases only enough to allow me to speak.
“Nobody,” I gasp.
But I have no answer capable of appeasing her. If she didn’t save me, I cannot explain how I am alive. It is not possible for any player within the blast radius of an angelgasm to survive it. I should be dead.
A mask of rage forms on her face. She picks me up by my throat and hurls me into a pile of bricks. To my shock, the bricks shatter beneath me, reduced to rubble.
It shocks her too. It was me who was supposed to break. She grabs me by my shirt and hurls me again, this time against a large steel support-column, the kind that is strong enough to hold the tower up.
I smash into it with enough force to break my back and most of the bones in my body. It hurts, but it does not break me.
I lay there dazed, trying to catch my breath. I don’t understand what is happening. I want to tell her that it isn’t me making it happen, but she’s already racing towards me, a snake-spear in her hand.
She hurls it at my chest, putting the full weight of her body into the blow. The snake shatters into dust. Her eyes go wide. She is stunned. She screams a sound of utter rage.
She backhands me across the face. It should be enough to crack my cheekbone. It only makes my eyes sting, and the taste of blood blossom inside my mouth. She hits me again. And again.
My hand scrabbles around for a weapon, and finds one of her slithering snakes. I fling it at her, lashing it like a whip. She jerks back, startled. The snake slaps against her body and immediately disintegrates into sand.
She looks at my hand in shock, where I had been holding the snake. I take advantage of her moment of surprise and punch her in the face. My punch is half-hearted, my every instinct telling me I cannot harm an angel. Her head snaps back at my blow, surprising us both.
We hurl ourselves at each other, meeting with a fleshy thump. We fall to the ground. We grapple, both throwing blows. She is the better fighter. She manages to get on top of me and pin me down, twisting my arm painfully behind my back. She rips at my jeans pockets, tearing the fabric to shreds, looking for I don’t know what.
She finds the note I had balled up and shoved in my jeans pocket yesterday. The note that an anonymous someone had posted through my door.
She holds me pinned down. There is a moment of quiet she reads it, and then she gets off me. Her boot shoves my ass so that I land several meters away from her.
She waves the note in the air. Her hand is shaking.
“Where did you get this?” she demands.
But I have no intention of trying to explain anything to her. She’s a mad woman. An angel. There is nothing I can say to make her listen. Especially not with a fat zero floating over my head. I need to get out of here. Away from her.
Her shove has sent me in the direction of the dead warrior. Next to his torso is the little gem gleaming with blue magic that she has left here. I put my foot over it.
Instantly, she turns pale. Her hand reaches out as if to snatch it from me, but she is too far away. She could reach me in a second, but she doesn’t move. Her eyes stay fixed on the gem beneath my foot.
“Don’t!” she says urgently.
“Get away from me,” I say.
“Don’t,” she says again, with a quiet intensity that compels me to listen.
But her voice is quivering. I know that I have her now. Whatever magic is inside the gem is precious to her. I have a feeling that if I break it, she will be so busy trying to gather the magic that it will be the perfect chance for me to escape.
I lift up my foot and bring it smashing down on the gem. It shatters. A voracious blue whirlpool of magic rises from it, engulfing me. I have only a moment to scream befor
e it swallows me whole.
10. Gamer of Thrones
I am still shouting when I land in soft, powdery coldness. It slumps beneath me, cushioning my fall. She lands on top of me.
She had thrown herself bodily towards me at the last second, right into the whirling storm of magic. Now we struggle to get to our feet, me falling over her in my haste.
She shoves me away from her with a snarl of disgust. My heels jam against a mass of twisted woody roots and I trip, and land hard against a thick tree trunk.
The bark that I am leaning up against is a red as blood, its rough rippled surface reminiscent of gore. With a cry of disgust, I hurl myself away from it.
I am shivering violently. It is so goddamned cold here.
Nearly everything in sight is white, engulfed in gently falling snow, except for the cluster of trees that we are in the middle of. Red trees with broad, fleshy red leaves, each in the shape of a face.
Several leaves have been shaken loose by our arrival. They lie in the snow, like bleeding faces torn off living people. My stomach churns. I look away.
Only to find the angel smirking at me.
“It’s not funny.”
It really is not funny. I have heard of these face-trees. They are legendary, and they exist only in one era of the game. One that I have no business being in.
Suddenly I feel a million miles away from home.
And I might as well be. Today is my day zero. I am going to die, and unless I do it with 500 XP there is no way to save Riverhaven or Rivertun. They will be gone forever.
A message comes up on my visual field.
Bonus for crossing over into the Medieval Era: 5000 XP.
It feels like it is mocking me. But then the next part shows up.
Balance: 3000 XP.
And that is all it takes to change my world-view.
My heart soars. 3000 XP! Who gives a crap where I die if I have 3000 XP!
All I have to do is keep it 500 XP in my balance until my death and it guarantees a basic re-entry into the AngelRealm.
I feel like dancing a jig. She can damn well kill me now. I don’t even care.
I soon change my mind. 3000 XP isn’t the fortune I wanted to make in here, but it is better than the nothing I had a moment ago. And it means I can afford an upgrade. I need to get to a TokenCenter asap, but hell if I know where to find one in the goddamned medieval era.
The message fades, and is immediately replaced with another.
Mission Completed: You have saved the damsel in distress.
Reward won: 2500 XP.
Balance: 5500 XP.
My eyes widen. 5500 XP! But a damsel? What damsel? My visual field answers in big flashing letters.
Congratulations!
You have had the pleasure of serving an ArchAngel!
Bonus: 10,000 XP.
Balance: 15,500 XP.
My mouth drops open, the huge 15,500XP which has launched me straight into Level 6 Novice meaningless.
ArchAngel! She is an ArchAngel.
An ArchAngel who is eyeing me with interest. She clearly knows my visual field has given me some mind-boggling information. She looks like she’ll wallop me for it if I don’t tell her what it is immediately.
“You’re an ArchAngel?” My voice comes out embarrassingly squeaky. “Which– Who are you? M-my lady?”
She looks smug and cocks her head, waiting for me to figure it out. I wrack my brains for everything I can remember about the medieval era. What angel dynasty has snakes?
I take too long. She begins to look annoyed.
“Eyila Sandviper,” she says, her eyes gleaming dangerously.
I stagger a step back from her. The Sandviper, Eyila of the SpearAngels. But she is gone. Vanquished. Except she isn’t, because that she is standing right in front of me.
She looks pleased at how my eyes have widened in recognition.
I am stunned. As I should be. Eyila Sandviper is a princess of The ScorchSands, daughter of a vanquished QueenAngel. Enemy of the GodAngel.
“B-but you can’t be,” I stutter, taking another step away from her.
She laughs. “You can’t run, little man. You belong to me now.”
I do what one should never do.
I turn my back on her. I determinedly battle my way out of the tightly-knit copse of trees, my sneakers useless in the knee deep snow, my teeth chattering, my stomach churning, hoping not to see what I already know I will.
I can’t be where I think I am. Why on earth would she have brought me here?
I break out from the cover of the trees, their thick fleshy leaves slapping my face, and there it is. In the distance is a glittering wall of magic glowing with crystalline light. It rises hundreds of feet into the air, shielding the land of the living from the madness beyond.
We are north of the shieldwall. We are in the land of BeyondWinter.
Like a death knell another message pops up on my visual field.
Warning!
The GodAngel has issued a warrant for your arrest. You have aided a traitor to the AngelRealm.
Fine: 20,000 XP
Balance: -4500 XP.
My stomach lurches watching my precious XP disappear again. What do I care about a warrant for my arrest? I would have been better off being dead before the stupid warrant hit my XP balance.
My shoulders sag.
I hear the crunch of footsteps behind me. Eyila SandViper cannot see the message. She thinks I am frozen in awe by the sight of the shieldwall.
She lazily follows me out of the copse, and sighs in satisfaction at the view.
“Beyond the wall is the fortress of Wintershield,” she says, as if I didn’t know. “Where we are headed.”
“You’re not going to kill me?” I ask, my throat dry. “My lady,” I add belatedly.
“Not if you make yourself useful.”
“But-but I thought it was your duty to kill day zero-ers?”
“Who says I won’t?”
I decide it is in my interest to change the topic quickly. I’ll take any respite she grants me. Heck, maybe I’ll even do the impossible survive this day.
“Why are we headed to Wintershield, my lady?” I ask.
“Because there lives a QueenAngel we must tame.”
“We?” I gape at her, my face as white and frozen as the rest of me is quickly starting to feel.
“You belong to me. You’ll do as I command.”
“But-but, you’re talking about a QueenAngel.”
A QueenAngel is more powerful that an ArchAngel. And yet she doesn’t seem to care.
“Sansara, the Iceflower,” she murmurs, idly twirling a snakespear in her hand. “Such a beauty. Queen of the WulfAngels. A tragedy what happened to her. Even you must have heard.”
“What do you mean by tame?” I croak.
She throws back her head and laughs. She stops abruptly, and when she looks at me her eyes are deadly cold as a viper’s.
“Welcome to the Game of AngelThrones, my lover,” she says. “You’re going to help me win it.”
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From the Author
Hey Reader,
I had a bunch of fun writing this book and hope you had a cracking time reading it.
Yes, I do love a certain medieval fantasy that has been huge over the past few years. And I love writing too, so when I started writing this series and it went in that direction, I was happy to go with it. Call it inspiration. Me having a bit of fun is not intended to ruffle anyone’s feathers. This is going to be my story, so don’t expect that many similarities
to the other. Enjoy it for what it is. If you don’t know what I am talking about, that’s cool too. Enjoy reading.
It is my plan to carry on writing this series for as long as people are enjoying reading it, or unless some catastrophe comes along. If you think you’re gonna enjoy this series, I’d appreciate your help. I would appreciate it hugely if you could do one of the easy things below: