The Great Game Trilogy

by O. J. Lowe

  Despite the pain wracking through him, the mud haired man said nothing. Up close, he looked tired, dark bags under his eyes. Wilsin took him in; saw the long-dried stains of dark red on his shirt and coat, the crusts of it under his nails. An icy chill suddenly rushed through him; he reached out and patted down the man’s pockets, searching for any sort of ID.

  “Look, there’s an easy way and a hard way. None of us want to do it the hard way. I’ve got better places to be right now, he does as well, so come on let’s just make this easy for everyone…”

  “Doctor Jeremiah Blut,” Wilsin said quickly. His fingers had closed around something hard and rectangular; he’d found the man’s ID card and read the name aloud. “What are we going to find on you when we feed your name through our computers?”

  Still he said nothing.

  “How’d you get that blood on you?” Nick asked softly. “Come on, Doc, it’s not a hard question.”

  That was when the attack came., one Wilsin never saw coming, felt something wrap around his waist, thick, muscular and covered in suckers. He let out a yelp; Nick snapped his weapon up immediately, his eyes darting back and forth in search of the attack. Looking past the flailing David Wilsin, already trying to free himself, he saw the long appendage holding him, traced its path up all the way to the orb.

  Something was trying to get out. Or pull him in. One of the two. He didn’t hesitate, didn’t even try to take the shot. The tentacle was blood red, covered in pulsing purple suckers, throbbing with muscle, Wilsin yelling in terror. Nick grabbed his summoner, slammed a crystal into it and brought Empson into existence.

  There’d been those who laughed at him over the years when they’d heard what one of his main spirits was. After all what could a penguin do? When they saw Empson, the laughs had died down. Empson wasn’t just a penguin. He was a Northern King Penguin, the superior cousin to the regular penguin. Added into Nick’s genetic modifications and what had already been three feet tall and a phenomenally strong bird for something its size became almost a war machine. He’d doubled its height to be almost as tall as he was, the beak could now punch through steel.

  As could the wings. The black and blue spirit sprang into the air from a standing start, swept razor-sharp wings through the air and brought them cutting through the tentacle from opposing directions. Nick winced as he saw them cut through the muscle and scales, blood and ichor spurting over the four of them. Wilsin hit the ground as the tentacle withdrew back into the blue.

  “Empson, Uniblast that portal!” Nick ordered, jabbing a finger towards it for added emphasis. The penguin didn’t hesitate, sent the beam of energy screeching towards it. Blut laughed as it landed, Nick had been expecting a spectacular explosion, instead it faded with a lame sucking sound, the energy ripped inside.

  “Fools,” he laughed. “It needs an offering. Let it take you and it’ll all be over. It’ll only hurt a moment. I suppose anyway, I’ve never died to find out.” His laughter grew ever more maniacally until Wilsin kicked him in the mouth, silencing it beyond the sounds of breaking teeth. A second later, the fresh howls of pain started. Above them more tentacles flailed out of the orb, scraping the empty air lazily.

  “An offering, eh?” Nick said. “Looks like you just volunteered.” He reached down, scooped Blut up by the collar of his shirt. “You started this, doc, I think it’s fair you finish it.”

  Before Wilsin could stop him, he hurled Blut towards the shimmering orb. Both flinched as another tentacle swept out, plucked the doctor from the air, then another and another taking hold of him. Fresh screams hit musty air as Blut struggled weakly to no avail.

  Wilsin couldn’t watch as he was drawn closer to the orb, body already contorted under pressure from the tentacles. Finally, just as when Empson had blasted it, they heard the same sucking sound, concluded with a final scream of terror before the orb vanished with a thunderclap, Blut with it, only a faint shimmering left behind as evidence it had ever existed.

  The silence was broken by the voice coming from their summoners, cutting into existence immediately.

  “… Agent Roper, do you respond? Agent Wilsin, what is your position? Can you hear me?”

  Wilsin responded first. “Will? It’s Wilsin here. We read you loud and clear. What’s happening out there?”

  “The storm,” Okocha said over the line. “It just stopped suddenly.” Nick and Wilsin looked at each other, then up at the area where the orb had been. “What is your position?”

  “We’re in the drains,” Nick replied. “I think you should get a team down here to look at this. Something really strange is going on.”

  “He’s right. He’s going about it in a really understated way, but he’s right,” Wilsin added.

  They’d been given the order to wait; Brendan King had been on the line a few minutes later, giving the order. It sounded like King was coming himself, Wilsin deciding to run up and guide them to the cavern while Nick waited with the remnants of battle, securing the scene.

  He yawned, tried to wipe some of the gunk off his clothes. His body ached where the tentacle had grabbed him. This day was already turning into a disaster, all he needed was Brendan to walk in and strip everything they’d done down into something that just sounded incredible. At least they still had the torn tentacle; it’d sound even more unfeasible without it. Either way, he still wasn’t looking forward to filing his report.

  Wilsin turned, saw a door they’d not noticed earlier. He could smell blood again, horrible thick gore and lots of it. He glanced down, saw the puddle and stopped. It came over his shoes, he had a horrible feeling dawning in his stomach. Wilsin reached for the door handle, turned it and stepped into the room, stopped short as the stench hit him like a punch to the gut, the odour dropping him to his knees and upchucking his last meal. Still even that was almost pleasant compared to the sights as he looked upon mounds of half-naked dark-skinned bodies piled high and lifeless, eyes blank and decomposing. Some of them still bore body paint on exposed rotting skin, dull and tarnished in the darkness.

  “Dear Divines…” he whispered, not able to look away despite the horrific scenes. He’d never thrown up at a crime scene before, had never seen anything like this before either. “Fucking hells.”

  It looked like he’d found the missing natives of the island.

  Chapter Nineteen. Recovery.

  “The one thing the Vazaran National Tourism Board never advertises to you, huh? Come to Vazara, birthplace of the genocide. More people killed brutally than anywhere else in the five kingdoms.”

  Christian Fagan to Alvin Noorland shortly after their examination of the native corpses.

  The twenty sixth day of Summerdawn.

  It didn’t take long for the cavern to become a hive of activity, as Brendan King showed up with Fank Aldiss and Vassily Derenko in tow, both looking decidedly grumpy at being awake at a scandalous hour. King, rather annoyingly Nick thought, looked gregarious enough for being gotten out of bed. A mood which had changed when he’d seen what he and Wilsin had discovered. Privately Nick was glad Wilsin had found the natives the way he had. It added a little more credibility to the shaky argument that something fishy had been going on down here.

  That phrase… he grimaced as he glanced at the statue in the shadows. He hadn’t noticed it during the firefight but with the lights set up to illuminate every corner of the area, he wondered how he’d managed to miss it. Something fishy. The statue was maybe about ten feet tall and cut out of rust coloured bronze, a giant squid-like being with a multitude of tentacles that looked all too horribly familiar. Just as he couldn’t help noticing the statue was almost on a parallel with where the portal had been, about level with the middle of it as well. A disc of smooth dark stone lay on the ground before it.

  “Kalqus,” Brendan King had said on glancing at it, a remark that had startled Nick.

  “Kalqus? The Divine?” He was a little surprise, not least because in his experience Kalqus, the Divine of water, nourishment and fishi
ng, was depicted as a great whale, not a squid. Though she was only a minor god, it felt like enough of difference to bring it up.

  “That’d be right,” he said. “Kalqus’ depiction does change from culture to culture. You view her as a whale, it’s the way I see her. The squid approach is mainly a Burykian view but there have been some known instances of it in Vazara. Nobody has ever seen a Divine, Agent Roper, therefore it is rare two people view them exactly the same way.”

  “Yeah but…” He cut himself off, letting his brain kick into gear rather than arguing the point, stroking his chin thoughtfully. “The way we view them gives shape? That theory?”

  King nodded. “That’s correct. If enough people start to view a Divine in a certain way, their conviction towards that appearance could invariably bring about changes to that Divine.”

  “All of it theoretical, of course,” Aldiss offered. They’d already called for more backup to deal with what had been found down here, Chris Fagan, Anne Sullivan and Alvin Noorland already wandering in. Anne looked a little nauseated, Noorland like there were a dozen other places he’d rather be.

  “Let me guess,” Derenko said, glancing at her. “Saw the bodies?” She nodded, didn’t say anything. “Not pleasant, right?”

  “Can they really keep the tournament going in light of this?” Fagan asked, his voice deep and accented with the high lilt of the islands he came from to the west of Canterage. “I mean, there’s something messed up with that, am I right?”

  It was a question Nick had already considered and chosen not to voice. Considering the killing that had gone on here, it felt a very trivial thing to bring up.

  “So much pain,” Anne said weakly. “Those people. They didn’t fear anything. They lived under the sun and the stars and then they were herded down here like cattle and killed one at a time. And they never knew why, those taken never came back alive.” She didn’t look well, like she wanted to vomit. Nick couldn’t blame her. Still, she hadn’t yet, which had to be commended. More than could be said for Dave Wilsin. He’d already been read the riot act for contaminating a crime scene by chucking up in the vicinity.

  “Nice,” Aldiss muttered. Derenko shook his head at him in disgust. Apparently, they were back to that debate over whether Sullivan possessed empathic abilities or not. Aldiss had always been in the camp that she didn’t; doubtless he was thinking she was playing the odds right now to keep the charade going. If people had been locked up and murdered here, it wouldn’t be hard to guess at their emotions during the ordeal.

  Noorland, meanwhile had wandered over to the statue, examining it with an appraising eye until finally he knelt at the disc of stone at the base of it, running a hand over it. He glanced at his palm, let out a sound of surprise as it came back covered in sticky dark residue. He sighed, leaned in and traced a finger through the stuff, feeling little grooves beneath the above layer of… Well that was it, wasn’t it? He didn’t want to think about how many people had been killed to produce this much blood. Yet he couldn’t help but think the number in question might well tally up with those who’d been found upstairs.

  “So,” he said, standing up and wiping his palm on one of the pillars, leaving a dirty red smear behind. “Human sacrifice. Not something you see every day, right? Even if you’re us.”

  “We don’t know that’s exactly what they were doing,” Brendan said quickly. “But either way, it doesn’t look good. We’ve got numerous dead bodies, several armed men also deceased, one big unidentified tentacle and two agents spinning a tale about squid monsters from another dimension.”

  “I never mentioned other dimensions,” Wilsin offered. “But…”

  “We also got a mad doctor,” Nick interrupted. “Jeremiah Blut. And there’s an awful lot of coincidence to explain away.”

  “Such as why you felt the need to murder him?”

  “There’s no evidence he’s dead,” Nick said quickly. As comebacks went, it felt decidedly hollow. “All I did was toss him through that thing. That portal you seem so intent on dismissing as a tale. And the timing is suspect at least. Almost to the second, he goes through that, it closes, and the storm stops, we get Okocha on the comms in touch with us. Make of that what you will.”

  “Both of you haven’t heard the last of any of this,” Brendan said finally. “I find some of this hard to believe.”

  “Brendan,” Noorland said sketchily from across the room. “I don’t think any of us have heard the last of this. Take away the fantastical aspects of the story…”

  “Let’s not forget the triplets either,” Wilsin said. “Why were they hanging outside the ICCC building yesterday?”

  Noorland glared at him for the interruption and then carried on. “Take away the fantastical aspects of the story and the actual hard evidence is that there is something worrying going on here. Those people weren’t killed by accident.”

  “Yeah,” Derenko offered. “And remember how they said the natives were going to be a problem when they first offered Carcaradis Island as a place for the tournament?”

  “I do,” Fagan said. “I remember our director being asked for his opinion, as a city champion, and he said it’d be irresponsible to hold it here while there were dangerous natives in the vicinity.” He did a good impression of Arnholt, it was hard to tell their voices apart.

  “And those championing the bid said that it wouldn’t be a problem,” Anne remarked. “Guess they knew something we didn’t.”

  “Come off it,” Aldiss scoffed. “You really think Reims, a big corporation would stoop to hiring people to sacrifice the local natives one after another down in a cavern that as far as we know, nobody else knew about?”

  “I heard something about how they were relocating them,” Derenko said. “Private location where they wouldn’t be disturbed, asked people not to look for them. Just saying.”

  “Fank’s got a point,” Noorland conceded as if Derenko hadn’t spoken. “I had Will call up the plans of the drainage system earlier before we came out here. This is not on them. Whole area is just unmarked. So, either someone did a shit job with the drainage or someone altered them.”

  “I could see Reims arranging for the natives to be killed, this whole thing reeks of a cover-up,” Nick said. “But why the sacrifice?” He jerked his head towards the statue and the plinth. “That’s the definition of sacrifice, right? An offering before a deity.”

  “Pretty much,” Brendan said. “I wouldn’t advise you to repeat that in public. Not in front of the media. Same goes for all of you.”

  “Just thinking out loud, Chief King,” Nick shrugged. “Just as I’m thinking maybe Will should look see if there’s any connection between Reims and Jeremiah Blut. Or if he can identify those three men. Or see if he can pick anyone out of a crowd they contacted on the island while here. That’s what I’d suggest doing.”

  “He has a point,” Noorland said. “We’re not going to get the answers stood around here all night.” He yawned as he said it, the hint being he wanted to go back to bed. Nick could empathise with him. The adrenaline was starting to wear off from the firefight, he could do with the rest.

  Slowly, almost reluctantly, Brendan nodded. “Okay, Noorland, go back to base and help Will out. Derenko, you, Aldiss and Fagan stay here, run the entire scene and get everything we need. Leave no stone unturned, I want every detail catalogued and reported on. The rest of you, head back to the surface and go about your business as normal. Wilsin and Roper, I want your reports on this whole sorry mess by this time tomorrow. Dismissed.”

  The sun had returned that morning, stronger than ever, beaming down hot enough to evaporate most remnant flood water in hours. The forecasters had found themselves predicting record high temperatures even for Vazara at the time of year. Most of the hotels had found themselves unscathed relatively from the damage. The architect had found himself involved in media work for various organisations for the next several days, trumpeting his own foresight about building them atop slopes so they’d be spared
the worst of the damage.

  The stores and shacks at the base of those slopes however had come off less well in the oncoming chaos, some very disgruntled owners had been forced to close, less than impressed with the architect. The owner of Birik’s Salves and Sedatives had been seen in a bar hurling a glass at the viewing screen when the architect, Timo Berthold had been applauding his own ingenuity. Nobody had blamed him. Even the local law enforcement had refrained from charging him with disorderly conduct.

  Again, the stadiums had fared better, some external damage to the seating areas, some flooding on the battlefields but most were declared fit for use by ICCC officials following inspection.

  The tournament resumed less than a day later…

  Mia had looked better; Matt had to admit as he wandered into the hotel room. She lay in a bed, her body covered with one of those crappy hospital gowns and looking thoroughly miserable at being here. Although he did see her face light up as he walked in, which he had to admit made him feel better. She didn’t like hospitals, she never had.

  “Hey, bro,” she said, her voice a little hoarse. “How’s it going?”

  “Better than you,” he grinned, holding up the balloon. It was a shiny black colour with the words ‘Get Well Soon’ written on it in silver writing, he let it hit the ceiling. “Brought you something to cheer you up and make the place look brighter.” He looked around and rolled his eyes. “Something to break up the white on white look.”

  She managed a larger smile than she had before. “Bless you, Matt.”

  “It’s the least I could do for you,” he said, unable to hide his grin. “How often do I get the chance to tell people my sister got hypothermia in the middle of Vazara? Epic fail, right?”

  Her eyes narrowed and if she’d had something to hand, she might have thrown it at him. Instead she descended into a coughing fit, guilt rushing through him that he’d made the joke.