Gods of Myth and Midnight: A LitRPG Novel (Seeds of Chaos Book 3)

by Azalea Ellis

  “Is there another way?” I said.

  “Backroads, but they’re all like this,” he said. “Backed up, both lanes filled with pods trying to leave the cities, barely moving. The only clear roads are the larger ones heading toward the cities.” He sighed. “Yes, I know what you’re going to say, Eve. And yes, there’s a large road heading to a city north of us.”

  “So…let’s take it?” I said.

  “We have no choice. We’ll just have to travel along it as far as we can, then cut around Mordsmouth so we don’t get trapped in the…” he waved a hand vaguely, “people.”

  Despite Adam’s reluctance, we moved much faster once we’d left the side roads and made it to the expressway. He was right. Moving north toward the city, the road was almost completely free of traffic, though the other direction was a honking wave of pods inching forward like molasses. A few people with off-road vehicles or hover pods had managed to get over the divider between the north and southbound lanes, and were driving the wrong way, speeding ahead of their counterparts.

  Most of the vehicles on our side were military, which made sense since NIX wanted us to meet them at a military base. We kept out of their way while trying to look as inconspicuous as possible. They didn’t stop us.

  The expressway was blocked off in front of the city by a line of military style humvees a few hundred yards before the road split and would allow us to travel around the sprawling metropolis. The blockade allowed the obvious military people through, but flagged us down and motioned for us to stop.

  A soldier walked up to us, and I waved him over, flipping up the visor on my helmet.

  “The emergency shelters are closed,” he said with no preamble.

  “We’re not going to the shelters,” I said. “In fact, we’d prefer to circle around, not even go through Mordsmouth. I hear it’s a bit of a mess in there.”

  He grunted. “Been doing the best we can. But, civilians.” He said it like a curse word. “Where you headed, then?”

  “Going to the base.”

  He eyed my group, taking in the armor, the bikes, and the kids. “You military?”

  I hesitated, and his gaze sharpened. “Not the same kind of military you are,” I settled on. “In fact, officially we are a group of civilians.” I didn’t want to have to produce some nonexistent military ID if I lied.

  “You got kids with you.”

  Was that a statement or a question? I nodded. “Between you and me, those kids are real valuable,” I said, leaning in and trying to mimic his speech patterns. I’d heard that made you seem more trustworthy. “Niece and nephew of one of the best weapons engineers in the world.”

  “Ahh,” he whistled, rocking back on his heels. “Special privileges, then? Damn, my family didn’t get no offer of protection, and I’m out here risking my life, not up in some bunker safe and sound.”

  I shrugged. “Mine neither.”

  After a bit more eyeballing, he waved us through. “I’ll let ‘em know you’re coming.”

  We’d barely even started rolling again before his radio burst out with a response. “Negative, soldier. I repeat, negative. We have report of incoming alien hostility. Send the group into Mordsmouth for rendezvous with our agents. I repeat—rendezvous will be inside Mordsmouth, at the central park.”

  His eyes widened, but by the time he opened his mouth, it was already too late to respond. One moment, everything was normal, and the next, there were alien ships in the sky. One destroyer, six smaller ships, each a bit scarred up but fully functional, as evidenced by their ability to blow up the expressway.

  The military people had to have been as shocked as we were, but they immediately attacked. The blockade guard behind us shot at the ships with his gun, screaming at the top of his lungs. Missile launchers turned atop the humvees and started blasting at the ships. Many of the shots missed, as the smaller ships dodged, and those that hit the destroyer didn’t do enough damage to matter.

  I slammed the accelerator on my bike and we fled through the barricade. The Estreyans attacked behind us.

  Chapter 16

  Confront them with annihilation, and they will then survive; plunge them into a deadly situation, and they will then live. When people fall into danger, they are then able to strive for victory.

  —Sun Tzu

  Within a few seconds, klaxons were blaring. As we reached the outskirts of the city, the flaw in our plan quickly became apparent. People were panicking. It was obvious that there had been rioting and mayhem even before this. There were broken windows, abandoned and looted shops, and wrecked pods that had been shoved over to the sides of the streets.

  This was on a completely different level. Despite the number of people we’d seen on the roads heading outward, there were tons still left in the city, and all of them seemed to be scrambling like ants out of a kicked hive.

  I swerved sideways, taking us down a side lane and away from the worst of the wreckage.

  Next, we hit a riot forming outside what I thought might be a military surplus store. What could they possibly sell that would be effective against an Estreyan? Guns weren’t something you could just buy as a civilian, after all. It forced us to adjust our route, again. Which forced me to wonder where we were even going.

  "We're never going to make it through like this!" Adam called out, even as Zed swerved around a man's body lying in the street.

  If the change in plans for us to meet NIX’s representatives in the park at the city center was spontaneous, due to the attack, then who knows when they would even show up? The park would probably be free of crazy people throwing themselves into traffic or deciding to bulldoze their way through smaller vehicles, but it was also exposed.

  No, we couldn’t go there. We needed a safe place to wait out the panic, someplace we could keep apprised of the situation as it unfolded, and which we could leave quickly if it became necessary. The emergency shelters were out of the question, too.

  I pushed my extra-sensory awareness to its limits, hoping to chart a path for us, and noticed something else instead, high above.

  —The skyrail isn't running.—

  -Eve-

  Zed's head swiveled to look at me, and he almost wrecked before regaining his balance.

  —If you say we should drive our bikes along the rails, I’m going to mutiny.—

  -Zed-

  —I’m afraid of heights.—

  -Sam-

  —No, that would be crazy. But there’s a station near here, and it’s locked down. Those buildings are always reinforced in case of terrorism, and there’ll be a concourse there where we can watch the city from above and catch the news stations.—

  -Eve-

  Adam threw out an angled shield, forcing an oncoming pod to careen out of our way.

  —This way.—

  -Eve-

  I swerved sharply to the left, cutting into an alley barely wide enough for Sam's bike with Adam's sidecar.

  We crossed a group of enforcers barreling down the road with no care for anything in their way, and barely avoided smashing into them.

  Even at our breakneck pace, it took us another few minutes to reach the base of one of the skyrail lifts. I skidded to a stop in front of it, leaving enough room for the others to come in behind me. "They must have stopped running sometime after the invasion," I said, looking upward to the metal beams cutting through the air high above.

  "Maybe the power cost was considered too great for nonessential use," Gregor said, hopping to the ground.

  "Or people decided their jobs as skyrail operators weren't important anymore when the world was ending," Adam said, lifting himself out of the sidecar with a wave of ink that formed into the strange octopus-spider legs and carried him to the lift. He broke into the control panel beside the clear plastine door with a crackle of electricity, and, after only a few seconds of concentration, they slid open.

  The lift wasn’t big enough for all of us and our bikes, so I sent Jacky and Torliam along with the kids first,
and then Adam brought the lift back down for the rest of us. I stepped out onto the empty concourse and moved to the clear wall of windows surrounding three-quarters of the circular station.

  Metal beams extended from our station in an array, reaching into the distance and connecting to other rails and lift stations. The skyrail was like a huge web, especially in the affluent portions of Mordsmouth. There, people could afford to travel above the smog, at a height where you could see the sunrise and sunset, and the grime of the streets was far enough away to seem unreal.

  This close to the edge of the city, it was also high enough to catch a glimpse of the nearby military base, though the smog and other buildings obscured all but a hint of the conflict going on there.

  We watched for what felt like days but was really only a couple hours, tense and quiet, as if making too much noise would attract danger. We could hear more of the battle than we could see—the boom of explosions, otherworldly screeches, and the sound of planes parting the air so fast it howled in their wake.

  Eventually, the sounds of intense battle died down, leaving only the occasional distant rumble and the shrieking of the emergency klaxons. Between two buildings, gone in an instant, I caught a glimpse of an Estreyan ship skirting the edge of the city, like a shark circling prey.

  Jacky’s voice was loud within the relative silence of our group. “What’s going on?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

  Within a quarter hour, it became apparent.

  The air at the edge of the city shimmered like a heat mirage, then stretched upward at a rate that seemed slow, but managed to cover the entire city in a dome within half a minute.

  I gaped. “Is it…” I turned to Torliam.

  His face was pale under its tan. “Yes. A barrier. A ship with the necessary channeling stones can draw power from the warriors within to create a sphere. The sphere then draws power from the earth to sustain the half above, and from the air to sustain the half below, with minimal energy drawn from the warriors. It is not so dissimilar to the barrier we were trapped in at the palace, except that it is much stronger. Sometimes, they are used as a defensive tool, to protect against attack from outside. More often, it is a method of quarantine.”

  It was obvious which was more likely here.

  Adam's link let out a crackle.

  That same sound emanated from all the speakers in the concourse, and rose from the city below us, like a wave. Even the klaxons that had been blaring the emergency alarm crackled and began to speak.

  “Your village is enclosed. You are not warriors. You need not to die, but those who are sickened must not remain hidden within you. Take them out to us, in the center of this village, and the sickened will be removed and the village released. If you do not take out to us those who are sickened, the village will not to be released and we will kill all your people. Our fires will cleanse all, the young and old, the animals and the bugs. Everything. You have three days.”

  The Estreyan-accented, grammar-mangling message played again, resounding from every piece of electronics with speakers across the entire city. When it was over, the klaxons fell silent.

  Zed shuffled a few feet forward and dug his fingers into the air, opening a small rip. “It’s visible in the Other Place, too,” he said. After a moment of hesitation, he closed the rip. “I don’t want them searching for us trying to figure out what’s costing them extra energy,” he said. “Not until we know for sure what we’re going to do.”

  “Get me the news if you can, Adam,” I said, not taking my eyes off the shimmering barrier. Three days. It wasn’t time yet to panic. “Do they think the Sickness has spread through our population?” I wondered aloud.

  “What if they’re after us?” Kris said.

  Torliam shook his head, placing a large hand on the girl’s shoulder. “They would call for Eve-Redding by name, if that were the case. More likely, they are either misinformed as to the spread of the Sickness, or this is merely an excuse to cow the rest of the world through a show of force.”

  I watched a spot of the barrier’s base through a gap between buildings. A human, far enough away that they looked more like a bug, moved up to the barrier and attacked it with something that might have been a crowbar. They were blasted back, and lay on the ground smoking.

  Adam managed to get the concourse’s screens to access the news, some showing local channels, and some international. At first, very little about the attack on the military base or Mordsmouth showed up, with most of the local news channels completely down. But over the following hours, the national news stations caught on. Then, a couple of the local stations, whose people had either been turned away from the emergency shelters when capacity was met or had decided not to go to them in the first place, got their broadcast back up and running.

  The military base had been overwhelmed, very much outclassed by the Estreyans. They’d only managed to damage a few of the ships, not a single attacker destroyed. Reinforcements weren’t able to arrive in time due to other skirmishes around the world, so this base, relatively small and unimportant, had carried out a fighting retreat.

  Mordsmouth’s quarantine was the biggest news, though. People speculated about the technology the Estreyans had used to create the barrier, debated what they meant by “sickened,” and wondered if the government would be able to save the city through either diplomacy or military action.

  Despite the gravity of our situation, when no immediate danger threatened, we relaxed from the unsustainable tension. The kids fell asleep on one of the concourse’s couches, while the rest of us discussed our options.

  “We’ll wait for the government to respond. I don’t expect they’ll actually succeed, but while they’re working on it, we can take the time to study the situation and come up with a plan.” I said.

  “I don’t like this.” Adam ran a hand roughly through his curls.

  I let out a huff that was almost a laugh. “No shit. So let’s get to work figuring out how to fix it.”

  By the next day, the citizens had already turned on each other.

  Adam turned away from the large window looking out on the city, his jaw clenched. “It’s already happening. I just saw a guy drag a woman out of the house, along with her IV stand. People are panicking. They’ll force anyone with the common cold to sacrifice themselves to the destroyer.” It wasn’t our first look at humanity’s depravity, but it still managed to put a sick feeling in the bottom of my stomach.

  Birch let out a low whine and curled up in a ball in the corner.

  We’d gone out in the early morning to explore the barrier and the park at the city center, where the huge destroyer was hovering. It broadcast the request for “sickened” at intervals of about an hour and a half. The park had a high stone wall all around it to block out some of the city noise, but people had used this as a way to keep others trapped inside by barricading most of the entrances and guarding the others to make sure people could only enter and not escape. On the bright side, the Estreyans hadn’t killed any of the people given up to them yet, and the broadcast hadn’t changed.

  Many of the people who’d been tossed to the mercy of the invaders fought back, trying to push through the gates or climb the wall, but some of them shuffled or lay on the ground listlessly, perhaps too sick to move. Too sick to be lying exposed in the park without medical care, if so.

  I told myself it wasn’t our fault, wasn’t my fault, but when I used Wraith to inspect the nearby buildings and sensed two medics fighting in the doorway while a group of children huddled to the far side of the room, the doors to the rest of the hospital barricaded closed with the patients protected inside, I couldn’t release the feeling of responsibility. If I didn’t do something to stop it, maybe it would be my fault, and I didn’t want to bear a burden any heavier than it already was.

  Torliam tilted his head backward. “I have no love for humans, but what is happening now will only lead to shame.”

  “What are our objectives here?�
�� I said, turning to the others. I had a good idea already, but, for something like what I wanted to do, it was best to draw the others into the decision making. I had unilaterally put them in danger many times, but I was realizing that might not keep working, if my plans kept backfiring. I thought I knew how they would respond, and this way, they could feel a sense of control while still doing what I needed.

  “Save innocent people from being killed by the Estreyans,” Sam said immediately.

  “We’d have to stop the war to do that,” Adam said, rolling his eyes. “How about we just help some of the people in this city.”

  Redness spread across Sam’s cheeks. “That’s what I meant.”

  Zed’s antsy fingers played over the guns at his sides. “We have to find a way to get past the barrier.”

  Torliam nodded at him. “Yes. We must continue our quest for the god. But first, we must acquire this substance which will keep you from succumbing to the tiny bugs NIX put in your body.”

  Jacky snorted loudly. “Little bugs?” She completely ignored the irritated look Torliam shot her, and turned to me. “I don’t think the Estreyans are just gonna let everyone go if we ask them. So either we do this sneaky, or we do this hard.” She punctuated her last word by smacking her fist into her palm.

  Zed pressed his lips together, a motion picked up from our mother, but which looked so much different on him. “NIX isn’t gonna be able to meet us in the park while the destroyer is hovering over there, either.”

  I settled down onto the cold tile floor, crossing my legs. “I think there might be a way for us to solve all our problems at once.” I held up my hand, ticking off fingers as I spoke. “Stop the civilians from being slaughtered, take down the barrier and escape the city, get the booster for Zed’s nanites.” I held up three raised fingers to the team.