The chieftain’s eyes shifted. To either side of him were the flayed bodies of three dvergar. Two men and a woman. Their blood, piss, and shit stained the stone slab, trickled onto the chieftain’s side. They still breathed but were unconscious. The pain. The pain had been too much for them to bear.
A little blood magic, so they would not bleed out, and Life Link to one of the other captives cowering on the ground was all Setnana needed to give them a living hell. The lost art of the vampire god, Bodek. The greatest shadowmancer to ever live.
The chieftain’s shoulders slumped. A bleak expression crossed his face; his eyes shone with wetness. A solitary tear trickled down his cheek. And then he stiffened. Nostrils flaring, mouth twisted into a hateful rictus, he gazed up at her, his eyes tiny black pebbles.
“Have it your way.” She shrugged.
In one motion, she turned her hand, allowing her haladie to drop into her palm. She cast Immobilize then Life Linked to a shackled warrior, directing his vitality into the chieftain. She got to work. Humming a tune, she peeled away his skin with the wavy double-bladed dagger, her hands becoming slick with blood. Soon enough, as with the others, his eyes rolled back in his head.
It took but a moment to realize she had allowed the heat of her emotions to take her. The chieftain was dead. Scowling, she had Ihuet untie the little beastly creature and roll it off the slab.
“Bring me another,” Setnana ordered even as she washed the stickiness from her hands in a bucket filled with water stained a bright crimson.
Ihuet chose from the line of dvergar on their knees before her Battleguards. He grabbed a woman by the arm. A young girl cried out and reached toward the woman.
“No.” Nomarch Setnana pointed. “Bring the girl.”
Ihuet tossed the woman aside. Khafra snatched the girl by her head. Setnana smiled. It was good to have Khafra back, even with all his scars. Too bad the Vindicator who had healed him could not have gotten rid of them.
“Nooooo,” the woman bawled. “Please, spare her. I will tell you what you wish to know.”
“Go ahead.”
And so she told, detailing where Adesh Hamada, Drelan Frost, and the others had gone to hunt. When the dvergr finished, she regarded Setnana with hopeful eyes.
“Thank you.” Setnana turned and strode away. “Bring the girl. Get rid of the others. Make it quick.”
Screams and cries chased her. Then the sound of spells. Of horror. Smoke hung thick in the air, a miasma of burnt wood and cooked flesh, rising to join the sky’s gloom. For a moment she had considered letting them live, but long ago she learned the value of not leaving potential enemies who could one day return for vengeance, the value of showing no weakness.
When her Battleguards were done, Nomarch Setnana called for the drakes. They took to the skies, meeting with the black clad Deathguards on zephyrs. The Deathguards were Nomarch Demipho Pansa’s way of acquiring some measure of justice, saving face after the events in Kituan.
Following the young dvergr girl’s directions, they soon found the cluster of foothills rife with korbitoises. Battleguards and Deathguards landed first to make certain no one waited to ambush them from the caves along the slopes. Once the area was secure, Setnana followed Khafra and Ihuet, landing where there were obvious signs of a battle. Charred ground. A massive carcass. Close inspection revealed the corpse to be a skinned chimera.
“Not more than a few hours dead.” Ihuet stooped over the carcass, studying it.
“A few hours too much.” Setnana scowled. Every time she’d come close, her quarry slipped from her grasp. “Whichever way they went, we must be able to catch up to them. They’re on foot.”
“Let’s hope,” Ihuet said. “The locals know this land better than we do.”
“Hope is not good enough.”
“As you say.” Ihuet bowed.
Silence stretched as her people searched the foothills. The wind ruffled the grass and carried with it the bloody scent of the dead chimera. She waited atop her drake, impatience growing with every lost moment.
One of her trackers approached. He dipped his head. “Nomarch, they headed east around the hills, toward the mountain.” He pointed to slopes shrouded by thick mists that ascended into gray clouds where lightning radiated in a hundred hues.
“There’s only one thing that way,” Khafra said, voice hollow, his eyes dead things.
“Imanok Sanctum,” finished Ihuet.
Setnana frowned, struck by a sudden thought. Have I gotten so lucky as to already be chasing the very same Blue Sky group Exarch Assam sent me to stop? Supposedly, Blue Sky’s best? Or were they simply fleeing? No. They could not know I’m here. When the Deathguards found them, they were already headed in the direction of the Empyrean Sea. They must be the group after the Sanctum’s treasures.
Her eyes widened. “We must stop them. If not from entering the Sanctum, then from leaving it with anything. I prefer the former. To the air!”
“Wait,” Ihuet called.
Clenching the drake’s reins tight, Setnana shot the man a scathing look but she complied. “What is it? They have a good head start. I want them caught.”
“And they will be,” Ihuet said. “But we cannot fly to the Sanctum.”
“Why not?”
He nodded to the chimera’s carcass. “Them. They guard the skies above the Sanctum and for miles around it. And that is just the beginning. The Sanctum sits in the middle of the voidstorm’s remnants. We would be dead before we got close.”
“Can we fly off this hill down onto the plains below?” Setnana asked.
“We could, but that risks drawing the chimeras’ attention.”
She growled under her breath and almost gave the order anyway. Until she considered Perihy. “Have two men wait with the drakes. The rest with us.”
“And her?” Khafra nodded toward the dvergr girl.
“What about her?” Setnana strode away. Behind her, the girl screamed.
CHAPTER 31
Frost’s group and the dvergar had skirted the Daggerspine Mountain and progressed through a valley toward a lake upon which the Sanctum sat. The day had long since died, its corpse the fathomless black beyond the light cast by their glimmerwands. Pregnant clouds had given birth to a storm. Cold, soaked, and huddled in a hooded cloak that fought a relentless wind, Frost led his group after the dvergar, boots squelching through mud. He wrinkled his nose at a mustiness reminiscent of Kituan’s canals.
Howling, the wind whipped raindrops diagonally into a million tiny opaque arrows. Lightning cracked. Again. And again. And again. Within minutes, the sky became a panoply of radiance as if the gods themselves did battle.
He and Gilda had hunted during the trek, and he was now almost level ten. Their group had killed two more chimeras at the valley’s entrance. He’d picked up another skill shard.
Piercer
Cast time: 1 second
Recharge Time: 12 seconds
Consumes: Aether
Effect: Fire a piercing Aether Shot through a maximum of three targets in a line. Accurate up to 300 feet. Gain 2 percent aether for first target with a 2 percent multiplicative effect per additional target. Each additional target receives less damage but is slowed. Available during Stand and Deliver when recharge is reduced to 2 seconds.
There was no hunting to be done at the moment. Anything with half a brain sought shelter. Except for his group. Even the Coalition’s drakes and zephyrs had disappeared from the sky behind them. Their absence did little to curb his fear of an attack.
“How much farther?” Frost shouted to Dagrun over the wind and deep growl of thunder.
“We’re almost there,” she said.
Frost tried his best to see into the depth of darkness beyond their light, to rely on his echolocation for a hint of imminent danger.
But there was just wind. And rain. A drum that played havoc with his senses. The musty breath of the lake hung thick in the air now.
Fifteen minutes trudging through mud and muck brought them to a small, squat, stone building. Dante held up his glimmerwand. They stood before a large solitary opening. Darkness waited inside. From within poured the musty stench. Earthy. Sulfuric. Frost grimaced.
“Imanok Sanctum is through there.” Dagrun pointed into the foreboding dark. “This is as far as we go. We will stay here to buy you time and for a chance to take revenge on the Coalition when they arrive.”
“Thank you,” Frost said, “but you’ve done enough. You don’t need to risk anymore of your people.”
“It’s what Einarr would have wanted,” Dagrun said. “Also, I watched your fight with Azonoth and heard you and your dresdor woman speak after.” He gestured to a young dvergr woman in blue robes whose skin was the color of desert sand. “Take Sigrid. Although she’s only level fifteen, she’s the best mystic we have left.”
“Absolutely not.” Frost shook his head. “You’re gonna need her here.”
“I beg of you. She’s my daughter. Her chance of surviving is higher with you than out here when the Coalition invaders arrive.” Dagrun reached up and gripped Frost’s hand, wet eyes searching his face. “She can help you. She even has her Servitors.”
Frost hung his head. He couldn’t deny those pleading eyes, the desperation in her voice. Nor the request of a mother to save a daughter’s life. “Only way I agree is if you tell me where you’re gonna be after you survive here. Where I can return her to you.”
“Praise be to Pyrini.” Dagrun looked to the heavens. Beaming, she squeezed Frost’s hand. “I am ever indebted to you for this. If any of us survive-”
“Not if. When.”
Dagrun smiled. “After the fight here, we will head up into the Daggerspine. We can hide for years within the mountain itself.”
“I’m gonna see you in the Daggerspine, then.”
“I shall be waiting.” Dagrun bowed. Then she strode away in Sigrid’s direction.
Frost turned to Adesh and Ryne. “Help the dvergar but don’t get yourselves killed. Make sure Dagrun gets to the Daggerspine.”
“No problem, boss,” Ryne said.
Adesh smiled in the glimmerwand’s blue light. “I shall give a good account of myself for Anefet’s sake. And for Blue Sky.”
“Thank you.” Frost looked to Gilda. “Anything we gotta worry about as soon as we enter?” She shook her head. “Good. We’re leaving when Sigrid gets here.”
Dagrun, Gunarr, and Sigrid hugged each other then stood for a while with their foreheads touching. After Dagrun planted a kiss on Sigrid’s forehead, she led the young mystic over to Frost’s group.
“This is Sigrid,” Dagrun said. “My only daughter.”
“Hello, Sigrid,” Frost said. “I’m Drelan Frost.” He indicated the others, each in turn. “That’s Gilda Mordian, Dante Blackblade, and Saba Nerubi.”
“Nice to meet all of you.” Sigrid’s voice was like wind chimes. Her smile was pure innocence.
“Be brave, daughter,” Dagrun said. “We shall meet again in the Daggerspine.”
Sigrid threw herself in her mother’s arms for one last hug. Dagrun looked up at Frost and mouthed, “Take care of my baby.” Frost nodded. Mother and daughter lingered in each other’s embrace a bit longer before Dagrun finally released Sigrid and made her way back to the other dvergar prepping for battle.
“Let’s go,” Frost said.
Dante strode toward the opening with his glimmerwand held up. Its light revealed the hint of a hallway. The moment he stepped inside, the hall lit up. Bloomglobes lined walls upon which were numerous murals. The largest depicted Emperor KiGyaba the hydra god, a dozen scaled bodies with snake heads arrayed behind him.
A cobblestoned floor stretched ahead. The group made their way down the hallway, footsteps echoing. At the end, the passage opened into a lighted room. They stood at the edge of a field of emerald grass. Or so Frost thought.
Until the grass moved.
Not the shift of wind, for there was no wind, but an undulating sweep that spoke of water beneath. This was no field. It was a vast pool of algae.
“This is the place? The Sanctum?” Dante’s voice echoed.
“Through there.” Gilda pointed down.
Frost frowned. “Under the water? We gotta dive?” The very thought conjured images of drowning. Images he knew too well.
“It looks worse than it is,” Gilda said. “We’ll be able to walk about two thirds of the way across.” She pointed at statues of Emperor KiGyaba to the left and right of the room. “Until we’re even with those. Then you dive forward and down and there’ll be a large opening. Count twenty seconds and come up. If you try to surface too soon, you’re likely to bump your head on the roof and knock yourself unconscious.”
Frost stared at the algae-covered water. There were many things he could do. Fight GUMs. Duel players. Climb mountains. Trudge through storms and snow. Dealing with water wasn’t one of them. He’d only cleared most of the oceanic content in the previous version of Ataxia after getting a water-breathing spell.
Old nightmares consumed him. Nightmares of the ocean in Barbados, of Hurricane Perol, of an inability to breathe, his fight to get to the water’s surface.
Someone shook him. He glanced over. It was Gilda.
“You alright?”
“Ye-yeah.”
“Then why’re you just standing there?”
Frost blinked. He realized then it was only the two of them. “Where’re the others?”
“They went already.”
“Even Sigrid?” Frost did a double take. He tried to picture the little dvergr diving into the murky depths. And simply couldn’t.
“Even Sigrid,” Gilda confirmed.
A path through the algae was slowly closing. He thought about making up a different reason for his stalling, his apprehension. But one look at Gilda’s face, which closely resembled her real-life features, and he said, “Remember that story about Barbados? About almost drowning? And the one about Hurricane Perol?”
“Oh,” she said. “I see.”
“Yeah.” His shoulders slumped.
“Having lived through Ezra, I can relate,” Gilda said. “You remember when we were in Niba I told you the game takes some getting used to? That whatever they’re pumping into us, that TNT stuff, can make things more than they are? Emotions and such?”
“Yeah… which kinda makes it worse,” Frost said.
“Yes and no.”
Frost frowned. “I don’t get it.”
“Those feelings aren’t quite right,” Gilda said. “They’re turned up several notches, but they don’t last that long. The emotion part of Total Immersion relies on the baggage we bring from IRL. It’s a mind trick.”
Gilda turned her aether ring. “Think about everything you’ve been through so far. How does Anefet’s death compare to how you feel about your accident? About your family? How does it compare to when your father died? To how you feel about your father now?”
Brow furrowed, Frost tilted his head to one side. His real-life experiences were with him every day. Every moment. Depending on circumstance. Even when he didn’t want to think about them, they were there. They drove him. Almost every decision he made hinged on them.
On the other hand, most of the emotions in the game hadn’t lingered. And when he’d been out of the game for a few hours he gave little thought to the experiences within it.
“She’s right,” a deep baritone voice said.
A baritone that was all too familiar. A baritone Dre hadn’t heard in over six months. For in hearing the voice, he was no longer Frost. Not in that moment. He was Andre Taylor. Dre. Mouth agape, he turned slowly.
A holo of Pops hovered before the hallway. Frost shook his head. I gotta be dreaming. He squeezed his eyes tight and opened them again. The holo remained.
It was baldheaded, had a full beard sprinkled with silver, a large nose, and smiling eyes. An unassuming build. It wore Pop’s favorite black Body Engineer sweatsuit.
“Son.” The holo smiled.
“Pops!” Frost cried. “Pops, is that really you?” He covered his mouth, tears streaming down his face.
“Kinda… sorta.”
“How?” Frost paused. His heart leaped with hope. His mind raced. “You’re alive. This means you’re alive!”
“Actually, son,” Pops said, voice somber, “it most likely means that I am dead in the real world.”
The words crushed Frost. Almost like the first time he heard them.
“But I’m in here,” Pops said. “In Void Legion. Or at least an emulation of my brain is.”
Grimacing, Frost shook his head, trying to reconcile himself with the statement. “Why didn’t you show up before if you’ve been here all this time?”
Alphonso floated down to Frost and Gilda. His eyes were the same deep brown Frost remembered. He had the same bags under his eyes and smile lines creasing his face. He reached a hand out. Frost did the same. Their fingertips passed through each other.
Frost sighed. “They really killed you.” Unbidden tears rolled down his face.
Pops nodded solemnly. “You asked why I didn’t make my presence known before. Risk of discovery is the reason.
“I’m here now because the aether rings are linked to this version of me. I can sense when and where one is used, but there are only certain places I can materialize without Equitane’s security seeing. I call such places voids in Mikander. Appearing any other place would expose the connection between the anomalies and the rings, and eventually, to me. I can’t afford that. Not yet.”
“Is there anything you need me to do?” Frost said. “Anything I can help with?”
“Yes. But first, how is the rest of the family, Theresa and the twins. Kai.”
Frost told Pops much of what had transpired since Pops’ death. At the end, Frost found himself apologizing for driving the Camry, for not being the man Pops wanted him to be, for making the game such a part of his life that he’d ignored so much else.
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