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

by Azalea Ellis

  I sent a Window to Sam, then opened my mouth and started to babble. "It's not what it looks like." I kept my voice low and urgent, hoping none of his other team members would hear and come to investigate. "Come in and close the door."

  He stepped forward again, but didn't close the door behind himself. "What is this?" His words were calm, over-enunciated, and held an undercurrent of danger.

  "Chanelle has the Sickness. NIX gave it to her. I know this looks bad, but Sam can fix it. I already called him."

  "He's dead. Very dead. And you're halfway through burning his body. How is Sam supposed to fix—"

  Sam laid his hand on the back of Vaughn's neck.

  Vaughn's eyes widened. He got halfway through a deep breath, and started to turn, trying to twist away. Then he collapsed to the floor, falling almost gracefully as his eyes rolled back in his head.

  Sam closed the door.

  "Like that," I said, answering the question Vaughn hadn't been able to finish. I returned my attention to the body, redoubling the power I fed to Chaos.

  "He'll sleep for a half hour at most," Sam said. "That particular poison is fast-acting, but a Player can burn through it quickly. Even faster if that healing Skill of his increases passive regeneration."

  I nodded.

  Chanelle scrubbed frantically at her face and hands, and Sam moved to help her get the rest of the evidence off her person. He didn't ask what had happened, but I heard him almost whisper to Chanelle, "It will be alright."

  I finished with Kilburn's body and moved on to disintegrating the vomit. "Are the others ready?" I asked without turning.

  "I think so."

  I released Chaos, then dragged Vaughn into the corner. I stared at him for a couple seconds, then let out a shuddering sigh and released Chaos. I killed him and disintegrated the body as quickly as I could, jaw clenched tight.

  I turned around to find both Sam and Chanelle staring at me. “I had to do it. He’d never forgive us, and we can’t afford that kind of enemy.” The words felt hollow in my mouth. I swallowed. I hadn’t liked Vaughn, but something about the way he’d just died for nothing made my stomach burn.

  The metal briefcase caught my eye, and I quickly checked to make sure it was still full of the nanite booster, then picked it up. ”Let's go."

  We exited the room close together and quickly closed the door behind ourselves, hoping that none of the other Players would see in. I held Chanelle's arm as we walked, staying between her and the others. The briefcase was too big to fit in any of our packs without emptying them of all our essential supplies, so I had no choice but to hope no one inspected us too closely.

  Torliam looked to me, and I gave him a subtle nod, then flicked my eyes toward the exit.

  I sat down at the chair Kilburn had placed for me before, and pretended to be engrossed in the news still playing on the wall.

  Kris' mannequins stayed in place, but she held her little wooden puppet in her arms and walked out of the room inconspicuously.

  One by one, the rest of my team members left the room, until only Torliam and I remained.

  Just as I was getting up to leave, someone down one of the far hallways screamed and the ra-ta-tat of gunfire echoed off the concrete walls. It came from the opposite direction of the entrance we’d come through. Maybe one of my teammates had somehow set up a distraction?

  I didn’t wait to find out, slipping out the doorway with Torliam on my heels while everyone else was distracted. We passed a few Players and military people along the way, but they didn’t try to stop us, despite their suspicious stares. Behind us, the commotion increased, and I heard the crackle of a radio, as someone asked if we were supposed to be wandering around.

  Our teammates were waiting in the open space off the main doorway, where we’d stored our bikes.

  I swung my leg over the bike that had been Zed's, since my own had been melted into a roof. He got on behind me and gripped the sides of my jacket tightly. I rewrapped my shemagh around my face to disguise my features from the surveillance cameras outside, for what little good it would do.

  "Where are you going?" one of the Players asked, taking a step forward as if to cut our escape route off.

  "Kilburn will tell you about it once he's done with Ridley," I said, flipping the visor on my helmet down. "Move."

  The Player hesitated for a moment, looking between us and his teammates.

  Chanelle was staring blankly already, whatever horror and fear she'd been feeling lost to the haze again.

  Jacky helped her onto the bike behind herself, and secured the other girl's arms around her waist.

  "One of our teammates is out there," Adam snapped. "We need to go get them. If you don't move out of the way right now, we're going to go through you."

  Unfortunately, his deceit didn’t work.

  “Stop them!” Someone near the common room shouted.

  I sighed, and lashed out with Chaos in the shape of a black whip, spearing through half the boy’s neck. We slammed down the accelerators before he even hit the ground, a group of people rushing up on our tail.

  Adam dropped an ink shield to plug up the hallway behind us, but I knew he hadn’t had time to recover fully, and was still close to exhaustion. If he pushed himself too hard, he might pass out again.

  When we reached the door to the outside, Zed shot both of the guards, while I used Chaos to rip a hole for us.

  The smoke and acrid stench of the city burned my nostrils as I inhaled the air outside, but I barely noticed it as I weaved through the large open lot and knocked down the solid gate of the wall separating the bunker facilities from the rest of the city. I bumped over the sidewalk and into the road, ignoring the shocked cries of pedestrians and the angry honking of what few pods were still brave enough to try and traverse the roads.

  Those cries of shock grew even louder, as Players and soldiers alike burst out of the bunker behind us, one of them flying.

  I barely managed to duck as a hard-light beam swept over where my head had been, disintegrating a wall in front of me in a thin line.

  Birch roared, and a gust of wind slammed out of the sky like the hammer of a god.

  The flying Player was smashed into the ground, only to be run over by a pod.

  Zed aimed some shots over his shoulder and, astoundingly, managed to hit one of the Players in the shoulder, though most of his bullets missed badly and only served to terrify the civilians even more.

  One of the Players breathed out a huge fireball, then grabbed it in their hands, spun around, and lobbed it toward us.

  Torliam responded with a lance of power that exploded the fireball before it managed to reach us. It blackened the street below it.

  We got a few moments of relief when we turned a corner and their line of sight was cut off, but they caught up quickly afterward, and the next street’s travelers found themselves similarly surprised and terrified as the attacks continued. NIX’s people weren’t as strong as us, but there were a lot more of them, and with the crowded and blocked streets, we couldn’t accelerate fully and get away from them. If it continued on, with more and more of them after us, things might get tricky.

  “This isn’t working!” Adam shouted. “We either need to stop and fight them, or find a way to escape.”

  I pushed out my awareness to its limits, hoping to chart a path for us, but remembered something else instead. I turned my head a little to the side and yelled at Zed, who was still shooting at our followers. “Remember how you said you’d mutiny if I said we were going to drive our bikes on the skyrail?”

  He turned back around to me, expression drenched in horror. “No!”

  I grinned.

  Adam shot out a bolt of electricity, the lightning arcing through the air like a tree branch and cracking into the chest of a lizard-skinned Player. “Where's the nearest lift?”

  He could have looked it up on his link, but Wraith would be faster.

  “This way.” I swerved sharply, cutting a dangerous path thro
ugh an intersection completely filled with crashed and abandoned pods.

  When we got to the skyrail lift, we coordinated to carry our bikes over our heads so we could all fit into it, and it went shooting up just as the Players reached its base. Both Sam and I struggled under the weight, and Jacky and Torliam helped to support our bikes along with their own.

  The ones with long-ranged attacks tried to break into the little cubicle protecting us, but Torliam’s Skill and the reinforced plastine held up long enough to get out of their range.

  I let out a sigh of relief, but my breath caught in my throat before my lungs had a chance to fully empty themselves.

  Estreyan ships flew in the sky, battered and bruised and heading our way, likely drawn by the commotion. “They didn’t leave?” I said aloud.

  The others followed my gaze.

  Jacky cursed.

  “Maybe they were hiding, waiting for NIX or us to show ourselves,” Adam said.

  Sam groaned, grimacing under the weight of his bike, which had the sidecar attached to it. “Uh, so we walked right into their trap?”

  The ships spread out. A few hovered over nearby buildings, while one closed in on us. A side door on the other ships opened up and groups of Estreyans dropped out, landing on the roofs.

  Adam’s link crackled, and, once again, every speaker in a city block started speaking to us.

  “Eve-Redding, you have been accused of treason against the Estreyan people and conspiracy to shelter those with the Sickness. Surrender, and you and your companions will be returned to Estreyer and tried before the throne for your crimes.”

  I let out a sobbing laugh, as the lift opened up onto the concourse. “Guys, let’s run.”

  Chapter 20

  I have seen beyond the bounds of infinity and drawn down daemons from the stars…

  — H.P. Lovecraft

  Adam turned to Sam. "You better drive real carefully." He let the ink legs settle him back down into the sidecar, and flipped down the visor of his helmet.

  "This. Is. Awesome." Jacky said.

  "Did I ever mention that I'm afraid of heights?" Sam said, wiping his palms on his pants before mounting his bike.

  I wasn’t optimistic about outrunning an Estreyan fighter, but I also wasn’t going to surrender, so our options were limited. I leaned forward and rode out of the concourse and onto the smooth metal track. The wind made my heartbeat spike with every gust, but it was even easier than I'd thought to control the bike. The ten-foot-wide rail left me plenty of space for error.

  The others followed after me, and, after we'd become accustomed to the novel experience, we rode faster, shooting straight forward on a path out of the city.

  To my surprise and cold dread, the Estreyans didn’t follow at first, and when they did, it was languid and unconcerned. The ships flew slow enough so as not to outpace the warriors following on foot, who were using their superhuman strength to leap the gaps between rooftops.

  —Turn left up ahead.—

  -Eve-

  When we got to the junction where the skyrail line we were on crossed another line in the great web, we swung left, still going almost full speed.

  Torliam threw up a rounded blue barrier attached to the side of the rail.

  My bike rode up it for a moment and Zed screamed in my ear, before we settled back down on the rail, now going west.

  I reached out with my awareness to see if the Estreyans behind us made any move to follow.

  They didn't. But when I centered my awareness again, I caught a faint hint of power ahead of us. It was too far to make out details beyond a vague sense of placement. My focus snapped forward, and I let out a hiss of air. "Someone's ahead of us," I yelled out, loud enough to be heard over the rush of wind. The glow of their power was stronger than any Player I'd ever seen. Maybe even stronger than Torliam himself. "An Estreyan," I concluded.

  "Shit," Adam cursed as we rocketed forward. "Just the one?"

  As we grew closer, I felt another glow, and another. "No. A couple on the skyrail, a couple on the roofs of surrounding buildings." I sent out a Window with icons marking the Estreyans ahead.

  "They are likely attempting to ambush us," Torliam called.

  "No shit," Adam snapped. "Any other obvious statements to make?"

  "We've got another cross-joint coming up," I said, raising my voice as Torliam scowled. "Turn right. If they don't have someone with high Perception levels, we might be able to lose them." I wasn't optimistic about our chances. Being limited to the path of the skyrail, we didn't have many escape routes, and, if they really were after us, they would know that. "Faster," I urged, pushing my own bike even harder as I crouched down over the handlebars.

  Zed's grip on my jacket was white-knuckled, but he didn't protest.

  When we took the right turn, Torliam once again threw out a curved barrier for our vehicles to ride up onto before rocketing down onto the north-running rail.

  I strained to keep the Estreyans within the range of my awareness. My heart sank as the spots of power began to move, turning north and keeping pace with us. We were quickly being encircled. I could sense the potential ambushers moving on our left and waiting not far ahead, and behind us were those from the lift, herding us to our doom.

  I had an idea, but we needed to be concealed for it to work. I snapped my awareness outward till my physical vision wavered, almost growing dizzy with the effort. There were no lifts anywhere nearby. No way to get down to the ground and the cover of the surrounding buildings. The Estreyans would be on us before we could find one and double back.

  I pulled my awareness back. It would be monumentally stupid to crash because I wasn't paying enough attention to driving the bike. “We need to get inside a building, but there’s no way down,” I yelled back.

  "Can we fight them?" Jacky said, one hand firmly clasping Chanelle's hands around her waist.

  "They're as strong as Torliam," I said. It was answer enough.

  "Damnit!" Jacky's voice was tight, and the tendons in her throat stood out in sharp relief as she clenched her jaw.

  "Maybe if we don't fight back they'll capture us without a fight," Sam yelled. "We could try and talk to them, or maybe escape when their guard is down."

  I thought of Chanelle and the kids, all infected with the Sickness. We didn't have time to waste, and we couldn't risk the Estreyans finding out and executing them. We also couldn’t risk being trapped on Estreyer till they died, if Queen Mardinest didn’t see to that first. "We're not getting captured," I said, trying to think of a way out of the rapidly tightening noose. I needed a way for the team to get down from the skyrail. A way for us to escape the Estreyans tracking us.

  The glint of rushing water caught my eye, as we drew alongside a huge building, only a couple stories lower than the skyrail. It was the city’s high class shopping mall, and was made of alternating strips of reflective mirrors and fancy glass. Decorative waterfalls rushed down the side of the building. Whatever power source was circulating the water was still going. Half the walls on the lower level were broken, either from looters or accidents. But the roof was intact, and it was only a couple hundred meters away from us.

  "Adam!" I screamed. "Do you remember the broken bridge of the North?"

  He cursed, but turned to Sam and snapped, "Get in front."

  Sam sped up and maneuvered to the forefront of the group while the rest of us slowed down a bit.

  "There's no architectural support for me to build on," Adam yelled.

  The Estreyans following us had moved up on our left, while the others moved in front of us, cutting off any remaining hope of escaping them via the skyrail.

  "There's no time!" Zed said, obviously paying attention to the movements on the Window I was sharing.

  "I will help," Torliam called. "One furdak for each of us, alternating till we arrive."

  "I have no idea how long a furdak is!" Adam screamed, slashing the canister of ink before him so that the black liquid flew forward. It formed into
huge clamps around the skyrail, attaching in several spots like a spider's web.

  Then it spread into a narrow bridge in front of us, and Sam swerved off onto it, with the rest of us following right behind, turning hard.

  While Adam's left hand threw out ink, his right stayed outstretched, muscles strained to the point of trembling as he formed a pathway under us, the ink coalescing as fast as I'd ever seen it form.

  There was a snapping sound behind us, and Adam's face whitened as the ink hastily connected to the skyrail broke, crumbling to nothingness. "Too heavy!" he squeezed out, still forming the path ahead.

  The ink-road lurched as Torliam threw out a wave of power to push upward against the bridge below us.

  The front tire of my bike bounced upward, and, when it met the ink again, it slipped, the handlebars wrenching against my hand as the tire failed to gain purchase.

  I pulled hard, and the tire bounced again as it twisted under my strength, then Zed and I were sideways, sliding with the bike half on top of us, spinning out of control.

  Jacky yanked upward, trying to avoid smashing into us, but her Skill wasn't strong enough to lift herself and Chanelle along with the bike. She crashed into us, and then we were all tumbling and sliding.

  Torliam's power spread out into a bowl underneath us, keeping anyone from falling to their deaths as we slid, rolled, and tumbled off the ink bridge.

  Sam crashed into me in mid-air, the side of his bike slamming into my outstretched arm and forcing it too bend a little too far in the wrong direction.

  A powerful gust of wind rushed up from below, as Birch unleashed his Gale Skill with a yowl that seemed impossibly loud for the size of his lungs. It went on and on, rising in pitch as the strength of the wind increased.

  I caught a glimpse of blood amongst the mayhem as I spun. Adam had drawn his twin butterfly knives across both forearms at once, cutting deep. He flung out his arms, and the blood flew outward, spinning around the group.