Kalmond tried to lift his Axe, but it was no use. The motion just caused his muscles to tremble. His heart clenched. He had to turn away. The paladin thrust out his hand, fingers spread wide. A horrifying stench permeated his skull as if his brains were rotten. His throat and lungs burned with unholy fire as the Fetid Winds spell engulfed him. He stumbled back, heart beating too hard, breath coming too fast, but still, he found no breath.
“He’s coming for you, dwarf.”
Kalmond’s head swung around as if it were an iron block moving towards an impossibly powerful magnet. The sword came at him, tip first, driving deep into Kalmond’s gut. The red haze saturated his sight, obscuring the enemy that bore down on him. A hand wrapped around his throat, pressing gently, knowing he hadn’t the strength to push back. The rasp of enemy battle-breath traced his throat, moved to his ear.
“And when he finds your rotted corpse… he will make me a king.”
Kalmond’s blurred vision picked out movement over the paladin’s shoulder. As the figure came closer, a faint smile touched the dwarf’s lips. This hulking form swung a blacksmith’s hammer to a murmured tune. Is bad, is bad. The paladin, unaware, took a blow to the back of his head that brought his armored skull into crushing contact with Kalmond’s enchanted horned helm. As his vision faded, Kalmond heard another hammer strike, a grunt and the crushing of bones.
***
“Is bad.” The croon barely registered in Kalmond’s buzzing head. He tried to crack his eyelids open, but after a weak flutter, decided it was far to much to ask for.
“Not good. Bad. Bad, not good.” The constant murmur of words and gentle probing fingers soothed the dwarf, reminding him of false memories of his mother caring for him. The memories were false—some part of his mind knew they came from movies, and books he’d read—yet, at the same time, they were real. Real enough to comfort, to fill him with the warmth of safety and…
Heat. Scorching heat. His veins burned, scalding blood flowing through them, filling his lungs, mouth, eyes. The sudden heat faded like the memory of a nightmare. Kalmond sat up, touching the skin that a moment ago felt like it would peel from his face but now merely tingled. Kalmond recognized Bertram squatting before him. His savior’s thick brow furrowed, mouth twisted into a pout. Even sitting on his hams, the giant’s head sat level with the eaves of the nearest building.
“Is bad. Is bad.”
“No, Bertram,” Kalmond said, then swallowed and licked his parched lips. Though his health was full, his mana warning flashed empty. He needed a drink. “I’m fine. Is good.”
Bertram shook his head and grabbed it, pressing both hands to his skull. “Is bad, is baaad.” His voice slipped into a groan, then the giant fell into a whimpering ball. A dagger of fear slipped into Kalmond’s heart, though the paladin’s cursed spells had worn off. He stood on shaky feet and looked around.
His eyes skimmed past the fallen wraiths and rested on two figures in the middle of the street, obscured by billows of smoke from the burning shop. One kneeled over the other, sobbing.
“No…” Kalmond stepped forward, knees almost buckling. “NO!” he yelled, momentum pushing him forward. His axe left a ditch in the ground behind him as it trailed on the dusty street, then dropped in a cloud of dust from fingers to numb with grief to hold it.
“No…” Kalmond fell to his knees beside his fallen friend, the body already starting to fade from existence. “BERTRAM! HELP!” he hollered, refusing to believe what lay before him.
Thuglar bent low over One-Eye’s fading corpse and whispered something. “It’s too late, Kal.” Thuglar scrubbed at his tear-stained face. “Bert… he tried, but it’s too late.” One of the elf’s hands clasped One-Eye’s tightly. Kalmond watched as it spasmed into a fist as their fallen comrade vanished, a puff of magical essence dissipating into the sparks and soot that clustered around them.
“Is… bad.” The whisper from Bertram pulled at Kalmond’s heart but he forced away the pain, shoved it into a part of him too deep to feel.
“Let’s go,” Kalmond said.
Thuglar stood, but instead of going with Kalmond, he strode off towards the flames of his burning shop. The wood elf cast a quick flame resistance blessing that Kalmond recognized by the blue glow that covered Thuglar’s body as he disappeared into the flames.
Kalmond counted the seconds as his heart beat painfully. He got to twelve and his resolved failed.
“Damn it,” he muttered, chugged a fire resistance potion and charged into the burning shop.
He found Thuglar huddled behind the counter. “Hurry up!” Kalmond bellowed, just as a beam fell directly above Thuglar. The thief didn’t flinch, not even as Kalmond’s axe flashed out and cleaved the beam in two.
“This thing ain’t made for chopping wood!” Kalmond hollered.
Thuglar jumped up with a box under his arm and the two left the building, but not before taking significant fire damage.
“Thanks,” Thuglar said after his coughing fit had ceased. “Uh, Bert?”
Bertram shuffled forward and eyed he wheezing Thuglar. The elf’s skin was red and blistered from head to toe.
“Is bad,” Bertram sighed as he applied multiple parchment strips to Thuglar’s body. Kalmond watched as clean, healthy skin blossomed from the tended areas as each bandaid faded. “Is good?” he asked hopefully when he was done.
The giant gave Kalmond the same treatment.
“Yeah, Bert. Thank you.” Thuglar passed Kal the box, then squatted in the street to drain a water flask before shoving handfuls of torn bread into his mouth to heal faster.
“What’s this?” Kalmond asked when he failed to pry the box open.
“Only the rarest gear in the Realm,” Thuglar said past a mouthful of half-chewed food. “Me and One-Eye are gonna… were gonna cash it in next month, sell it on the open market.” He reached over and flipped the box open with the press of a finger. Eyes darting back and forth, he settled on a spot and tugged. Thuglar’s gloves shimmered and shifted into a new form.
Gloves of Theiving: +8 Agility
“You still can, Thuglar. He’s not really dead.” Kalmond eyed Thuglar, wondering if he’d gotten so drawn into the game he’d forgotten that.
“No, Kal.” The box slammed shut and Thuglar dismissed it into his inventory with a terse flick. “That was his only character. He always said—always—that if One-Eye died, he was done, forever. He didn’t bother with resurrection credits, put all his circs into our business. He was one of the best merchant-class characters in the game. His lady hated him playing and he was only sticking around for the loot.”
“Oh.” Kalmond was surprised at the deep loss soaking his bones. Though he’d rarely quested with One-Eye, the old man was a staple of the game, as consistent as Virgil almost.
“There’s only one reason he’d get back in the game, but forget about that now. We need to keep moving.” Thuglar said. He pressed his lips together in a tight line and shrugged off Bertram, who was muttering under his breath while checking Thuglar for further injury.
The trio sprinted towards the town centre, meeting no more resistance than a stray wolf cub who growled as they passed, and an arrow from an overzealous patrol who didn’t look before shooting.
“You idiot!” the archer’s companion snapped. “It’s them! The Noble Four. Or two. Three?”
“Where are our friends?” Kalmond gasped, endurance bar near zero.
“We’ll take you.” The soldier, a taller than average dwarf warrior, turned heel and strode off with a curt gesture for the others to follow.
“You better get your ass back, dwarf. The sorceress is most displeased.” The archer’s words were softened by the wink emoji in her speech bubble.
He groaned internally and decided against stopping to eat and replenish his endurance. Truth be told, he was eager to be back with Keerna and Thornbark. Their group didn’t just fight well together, they battled like a professional team, reacted to each other’s thoughts and played on
each others strengths. He felt safer with them. He felt complete.
They all ran hard towards a purple glow that rose up from the town square.
“Keerna? We’re here,” Kalmond thought. The dome swirled, then popped like a soap bubble. The four travellers stepped forward, the archer hailing a shadow on a rooftop three buildings down. The streets dimmed with lavender hues, then cleared as the shield was re-stabilised.
“That’s… that’s huge!” Thuglar said, voice low.
“Got twenty-seven mages holding it up. Nobody in the game’s ever done it before,” the archer said smugly. “Thuglar, the centaur wants you to see him immediately. He’s organising the long-range defense. Kalmond, you’re to report to the sorceress. They should both be near the fountain.”
Kalmond hurried forward past the people milling in the streets. Some, he recognised as NPCs, bakers and crafters and those put in just for show. All of them watched the sky with worried expressions, clutching the props given to them by procedural algorithms deep in the server farm. All of them showed an awareness that shouldn’t be possible. Some noticed the procession. Those that did bowed or saluted to Kalmond and Thuglar, an experience made all the more surreal by the picturesque village buildings beneath the swirling iridescence.
They reached the fountain and forced their way through a crowd. Here, most of the people seemed to be players, milling about, duelling or frantically crafting healing and mana potions and swapping enchantments. Thuglar passed one such a group, surprised to see a high level player refusing payment for the rare and powerful enchantment he’d just laid on a suit of armor.
“I said no payment. This is a world quest—if we win, we win together. The message said victory will unlock—” The speaker’s words faded as they passed out of chatting range, but the scene lodged in Thuglar’s mind and he turned it over like a smooth stone, lost in thought until a pair of arms wrapped around him in a tight hug.
“I’m so glad you guys are safe!” Keerna said. She turned to the cluster of robed characters behind her. “Just focus on the shield. I hear your concerns, but I still think the precious time it will buy is worth the mana expense. The alchemists are working as hard as they can and I’ve been assured they have plenty of materials. I’ll let you know if anything changes.”
One by one, they nodded and drifted off. Keerna turned back to Kalmond and Thuglar. “We’ve fought off three waves, but I don’t know how we’ll go with the next. They know we’ve bunkered down, and the more people we funnel out, the harder it’ll be.”
“You’re porting people out?” Thuglar looked around. There were still at least a sixty people here, it would take one mage a day and a half to move them all.
“Trying to. We have four mages—” She broke off at Kalmond’s murmur of surprise. “Yeah, Driskrol got in touch with the others and they agreed to help. The portal mage guild is sending members.”
“Driskrol?” Thuglar said, scratching his peaked elven head. “He rage quit last night at the shop.” Thuglar paused for a moment at the mention of his burned shop and their dead orc friend. “Said he wasn’t going to play for a while.”
“Well,” Kalmond chimed in. “Driskrol isn’t the only one calling in sick to play R9C today.”
Chapter 20
“We have bigger problems,” Sally Cordina said, smoothing the charcoal gray skirt of her already unwrinkled business suit as she sat on the corner of her desk.
Dennis said nothing as he closed her office door and sat in an overstuffed leather chair arranged with three others of its kind around a circular glass coffee table. Dennis crossed his long legs casually and leaned back. He looked around the office as he fished in his suit pockets. “Your office is twice the size of mine,” Dennis said. “I’ve seen all the executive suites. This is the biggest.”
Sally shook her head and blinked rapidly. “OK,” she replied, her severe mouth tightening further into a white line.
Dennis produced a gold zippo lighter and a brass cigarette case. Sally shot up from her desk and tried to object, but her anger only allowed her to stammer.
Dennis took a long drag and set the lighter down on the glass table to produce a ringing sound. He turned the lighter towards Sally to reveal a small insignia. “Special Operations command gave this to me after they forced me into retirement twenty years ago,” Dennis said. “It’s a joke, really—something they give to people who set their careers on fire.”
“You can’t smoke in here!” Sally finally said, finally able to express herself. Her deep voice grew shrill and unfamiliar to her own ears.
Dennis took another drag and released a cloud into the office as his answer. “Like you said,” he replied, flicking ash onto the carpet, “we have bigger things to worry about.”
It was Dennis who suggested they leave Gideon’s creepy penthouse and confer in Sally’s office.
“Is this why you wanted to come here?” Sally asked, arms akimbo with both feet planted firmly on the berber carpet. “To make some primitive dominance gestures? Don’t try to mind-fuck me here. You’re just another shaved ape, the kind I leave broken in the ditch in my rearview mirror.”
Dennis gave a smoky chuckle. “Well, yes. I did come here to play some mind games. I do intend to find out what you are really made of, because if we don’t show our true mettle now, we are well and truly fucked.”
Sally shook her head and moved slowly behind her desk, where she settled down into her chrome and leather executive chair. She squinted at Dennis, dissecting him in her mind with a sharp scalpel. “As I was saying, we have bigger problems. The VIRGIL construct is changing the game rapidly. To my staff, it looks like Gideon is making unilateral decisions. The departments are scrambling to implement changes and to keep the servers running.”
“How does this compare to the potential revelation of the hundred or so felonies we and one-hundred twenty five co-conspirators are busy committing down there in the basement?”
It was Sally’s turn to lean back and regard her partner in crime with a rapier grin. “We’ve been able to hide our conspiracy precisely because this company runs like clockwork. Compartmentalized departments so far meant that we had control over certain information.”
“Skip the lecture,” Dennis said. “I designed the department structure for this reason.”
“Why, then,” Sally asked, leaning forward, “do you fail to see that departments freaking out and asking questions is a major problem?”
To her surprise, Dennis smiled. “That is an excellent question. I’ve been a bit distracted, but I’m glad you’re on the job. What do you propose?”
“I wish I knew. I thought that was why we were here.”
“I am hopeful some solutions will present themselves when my latest operation plays out. Our nerds found a weak spot in VIRGIL’s perimeter.” Dennis looked at his watch and nodded his head. “We need to dislodge the problem in the basement. That is task one. You just do your best to keep a lid on your staff.”
***
Martin Chauncy shook his head and looked over the assemblage of components on the workbench. This particular bench had been wheeled to the far corner of the lab where it became a catch-all for spare and discarded components, botched experiments, prototypes and abandoned projects. The bench and the shelf beneath it contained everything he needed to repel the coming attack.
“Vents,” Martin muttered. “Coming through the vents like a bad action movie. Idiots.”
“I wrote a quick program to identify them by the camera microphones and the HVAC backpressure sensors,” Najeel said, typing away rapidly with his one good hand. “The VIRGIL construct has complete control of the surveillance system now, as well as most of the building machinery.”
“Just let me know when they’re close,” Martin said, eyeing the vents along the back wall of the lab.
The lower levels of the Plexcorp building were constructed like vaults. All the walls were poured concrete. The metal panels of a drop ceiling covered light fixtures, pipe runs
and cable chases stuffed with wiring to power vast arrays of machinery and supply it with data. To keep the laboratories and office spaces from becoming echo chambers, sound-deadening panels were screwed to the walls at various intervals.
One of the many things that Martin liked about working at Plexcorp was that Gideon specified the finest, most expensive materials for his projects. Whether it was computer equipment, engineering tools, infrastructure or office decor, everything screamed quality. The sound-dampening panels were framed with high-quality brushed stainless steel tubing.
Martin had dismantled one of the panels. The soft foam, with its varying, protuberant angles, he tossed in the corner. He took a hacksaw to the tubes, removing the rounded corners to yield four pipes, two about four feet long, and two nearly half that length. He chuckled and grinned, as he shook his head, using sandpaper to smooth the cut edges, both inside and out.
“Do me a favor,” Martin said. “Run me some simulations on the shear strength of kevlar weave.”
Najeel’s eyes flicked up from the screen and met Martin’s. The doctor squinted, cocked his head and asked, “I’m assuming you’re looking to defeat a bulletproof vest?”
“Yes indeed. Give me the energy required in joules. I’ll send you the shape of the object, and I can do the rest,” Martin replied, stepping over to his workstation.
He paused for a moment to look at the final rendering of the objects that were coming to life in the 3D printer nestled in a back corner of the lab. “This is going to be so much fun,” he said, unable to restrain a manic giggle as he mashed the enter key.
A few seconds later, Najeel said, “Got it.” He went into another flurry of keyboarding and rapid mouse movements.
While Najeel worked, Martin broke out a compact tig welder and connected the pipes. He lifted his welding mask a few times to refer to the rough sketch taped to the wall beside him. A half-hour later, he had two devices that resembled half-trumpets without bells and with only single valves.
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