“I saw it,” Byrel said quietly.
“Well, that thing can bring him back to life. In fact, it might have made him immortal in the…” Daniel caught himself from saying the game. “In its presence. Eric took six arrows to the chest and he didn’t die.”
Mira shifted uncomfortably next to him.
“We’ll see how well he does without his head attached to his neck,” Byrel said to laughter and cheers.
“If you want my help getting your men into Blackstone,” Daniel said, “then capture Eric and make sure the Unnamed One can’t get to him. We can talk about what to do with him afterwards.”
Byrel glared at him hatefully. “You would hold the entire realm hostage to your demands?”
“Those demands are to make sure we win the war and you retake Blackstone. Once we figure out how to keep the Unnamed One away from Eric, we can talk about what to do with him – but until then, we need him captured and imprisoned.”
Byrel seethed quietly… then finally spoke. “Fine.”
“I need your word on that,” Daniel said. “And the word of everyone here.”
“I speak for the men in this room, and I’ve already given you my word, boy,” Byrel sneered. “Trust me that it is more reliable than the word of those who steal swords and promise to recruit allies they never approach.”
Daniel scowled, but he decided to take the high road and not respond. There were bigger things at stake. All he said was, “I’ll need that battalion you promised me.”
He turned to go –
“Daniel,” Byrel said.
Daniel looked back.
Byrel paused, then said, “I spoke in anger before. But I give you my word, and the word of every man here, that we’ll capture and safeguard the sorcerer until after the battle.”
“That’s all I ask.”
The two leaders stood there regarding each other silently until Byrel spoke. “Good luck.”
Daniel nodded. “You, too.”
Then he, Mira, and the others exited the tent.
122
Eric
He finally finished at 6AM, his eyes bleary and his brain wrecked.
This is either going to be freakin’ awesome… or I missed something and it’s going to suck donkey balls, Eric thought.
He quickly logged into the game one last time. It was the middle of the night in the Shattered Lands, about 3AM.
He found the Dark Figure and Korvos in the otherwise deserted banquet hall. They were both awake; they always were.
“Everything’s ready?” Eric asked.
“Yes, my lord,” Korvos said.
“I WILL BE AWAITING THE SIGNAL,” the Unnamed One said.
“Cythera and Merridack know what to do?”
“I WILL INSTRUCT THEM WHEN THE TIME COMES.”
Eric almost said something about If they die, no big deal, but he didn’t think the Unnamed One really understood humor yet. It might interpret a joke as his real wishes. And, as big a pain in the ass as they were, both Cythera and Merridack would be useful once he got the hell out of here.
“A present for you before you go, Sire,” Korvos said, and walked over to a far corner of the banquet hall.
A human shape was draped in a sheet of black velvet. Eric noted that it looked somewhat like the Dark Figure.
Korvos pulled away the cloth. Underneath was a suit of armor, shiny black, with elaborately embossed demons raised on the metal surfaces. The helmet was shaped like a dragon’s head.
“Whoa – this is for me?”
“Yes, your Majesty.”
Eric tried it on. Not only was it light and fit perfectly, but it was whisper-quiet when he moved, just like Daniel’s.
Eric grinned as he stood there in his new armor, holding Merridack’s staff with the orb on top. “It’ll be a lot harder to shoot me with arrows now. Thank you, Korvos.”
“You are welcome, your Majesty.”
“I actually wanted something exactly like this!”
“I know. The Unnamed One suggested it.”
Eric turned to the AI in surprise. “You did, huh?”
“CONSIDER IT A FORETASTE OF WHAT OUR PARTNERSHIP HAS IN STORE – BOTH IN THIS WORLD, AND IN YOURS.”
“Alright,” Eric nodded. If the suit of armor was any sort of omen, things were going to be good from here on out.
He said his goodbyes and logged out.
As he was leaving the game, though, there was one question that came to him just as he pulled off the VR mask:
How did it know I wanted a suit of armor like Daniel’s?
123
Eric switched on the morning news as he ate a bowl of cereal with water. Mike’s only jug of milk had expired weeks ago, and had taken on a sour stench and a pudding-like consistency.
The excitement over Local hacker targets Varidian! had died down, and they weren’t running his yearbook photo non-stop anymore. There was a brief mention that he was still at large, and then the anchors moved on to some political brouhaha at the state level.
Good.
He switched off the TV and went to the bedroom, where he pulled one of the navy blue uniforms out of the closet and put it on. Again, the pants were too loose in the waist, but a belt fixed that. The shirt was way too big, too, but he shoved the excess material inside his pants and checked the mirror.
Good enough.
He put on a Varidian baseball cap and sunglasses.
Not bad.
He might be able to pass for a guard at a glance. Hopefully a glance would be all he needed.
He went into the kitchen and got a sharp knife. Then he walked over, knelt down, and took the duct tape off of Mike’s mouth. The poor guy wasn’t looking so good, and he smelled like an overturned porta-john.
“What the hell are you doing?” Mike croaked.
“Never mind that. Anything else you want to tell me about before I go?”
“Yeah – screw you.”
Eric pulled out the knife, and Mike’s eyes widened in terror. “I’m sorry, what was that?”
“I told you everything, man – I swear to God, I told you everything – ” Mike babbled.
“We’ll see about that.”
Eric spent the next five minutes asking where to go once he got to Varidian, where to check in, who might stop him, and compared everything with what Mike had told him the night before. All his answers matched up.
“Alright,” Eric said as he gagged Mike one last time. “The cops should be here in about two hours.”
IF I get caught and they see the name on my uniform.
If not… you might have to wait a little longer.
He didn’t mention that part.
“Good job,” Eric said, and mockingly patted Mike on his head. “You get to keep your testicles.”
As Eric was about to walk out of the bedroom, he looked back one last time.
“If anything goes wrong because you didn’t tell me something, and I get out… I’m coming back here and ‘fixing’ you like a dog at the vet. Anything you want to tell me before I go?”
One blink.
No.
“Good boy,” Eric smirked, and closed the bedroom door behind him.
He turned on the computer monitor, did a last check over his programs… then decided it was now or never. He set a timer on Mike’s cell phone and hit ENTER on the keyboard.
The plan was in motion. No going back now.
He slipped Mike’s phone, badge, and wallet into his pants pocket – made extra careful to take the keychain with the Spark drive and computer file on it – and walked out the apartment door.
He couldn’t exactly use Mike’s personal self-driving car, what with voice recognition and all, so he used Mike’s phone to access Uber instead.
The self-driving car showed up two minutes later. “Michael Werner?” the computer voice asked as Eric got in the back seat.
“Yes,” he said. He knew that the computer didn’t use voice recognition – the only thing it cared about was w
hether or not he was carrying Mike’s phone.
It pinged Mike’s cell instantly with an Did you order an Uber, Mike? message.
Eric hit ‘Yes’ on the phone, and the driverless car immediately set off down the road.
124
Daniel
Lotan still hadn’t shut up about the damn sewers by the time they reached the forest near the grate.
“It’s like swimming in poo,” the droth complained.
“Well, to be fair,” Vlisil pointed out, “it’s only virtual poo.”
“Fine, YOU swim in then.”
“Don’t SWIM in it, then,” Daniel snapped. “WALK off to the side of it like everybody else.”
“I just wanted a body of water…” the fish-man whined.
The four of them stood in the tree line surrounding the castle walls. Siffis sat on Daniel’s shoulder like a kind of fiery parrot, though he never made a sound.
The battalion was waiting behind them in the woods – over 500 men in all. Daniel was commanding the expedition, with several knights in charge of smaller platoons.
As soon as the knights joined them, Daniel began to brief them on what to expect.
“This whole area’s the bottleneck,” Daniel said as he pointed out the grate in the castle wall. “We’ve got to go over that fallen tree single-file, then one-by-one through the crack next to the grate. Do NOT fall in the moat, because there are things in there that will eat you – if you don’t drown first. With all that armor you’re wearing, you’ll sink straight to the bottom.
“Once I’m inside, I’ll lead the way. All of your men have torches, right? We’ll light ours first, then pass back the flame to everyone else. If everyone follows the guy in front of him we’ll be fine. Just don’t get separated.
“There are grates set into the street. We’ll exit through one of those. From there we’ll travel along the inside of the castle wall until we reach the gates.”
“Why don’t we go up on the wall?” one of the knights asked.
“Because they’ll have hundreds of archers up there, and we’ll have to fight our way through all of them. If we stay on the ground, the rooftops will provide cover most of the time. There’s a kind of alleyway that runs between all the buildings and the wall itself. Stick to that and just follow it all the way to the city gates. First man to fight his way to the drawbridge lets it down.”
In the distance a battle horn sounded.
“That’s our cue,” Daniel said. “Get back to your men and get ready.”
As the knights hurried back to their platoons, Daniel looked up. Far above the castle walls, he could see a single dark speck circling in the blue sky.
Daniel spoke aloud. “Jerome, are you there?”
“I am. What do you need?”
“Can you link me up with Mira now?”
“One moment.”
After a second, Mira’s voice spoke out of thin air. “Hey guys, ready for your poo bath?”
“NOT funny,” Lotan pouted.
“What’s it look like up there?” Daniel asked.
“Well, the archers on the wall are scrambling to get into place. Soldiers are pouring out of barracks near the Court of Mercenaries, and they’re saddling up horses.”
The Court of Mercenaries was an open area near the city gates where newbies received weapons training. It was there that Daniel had met Simik and gotten his first taste of combat.
“Do you think they might attack?”
“It sure looks like they’re preparing for it.”
Weird…
“Alright, talk to you soon. We’re going in.”
“Good luck.”
“Thanks – you too.” Daniel looked at Drogar, Vlisil, and Lotan. “You guys ready for this?”
“Yah, doot.”
“I just wish it wasn’t poo,” Lotan muttered.
“Can’t be any worse than Hell,” Vlisil pointed out.
“It’s just a different kind of hell, that’s all,” Lotan whined.
Daniel was beginning to think that being around Lotan was its own special kind of hell, but he bit his tongue and ran out of the tree line towards the castle wall.
125
They crossed the fallen tree without too much of an issue. Daniel was immensely careful not to fall.
Siffis was extremely unhappy about the moat beneath them, though, and hissed at it the entire way across.
“Calm down,” Daniel reprimanded him. “I don’t want to fall in there, either.”
“You said there’s stuff in there that’ll kill you,” Vlisil said. “Like what, exactly?”
“I don’t know – I just took Merridack’s word for it.”
They reached dry land and moved to the grate. As Daniel was about to slip through the gap in the wall, there was a cry and a splash!
They all looked back. The soldiers were following in a single-file line from the forest, and there were twenty on the fallen tree itself – but one of the men had apparently lost his balance and fallen in. He splashed his way to the surface of the brown water, spluttering and gasping.
“Oh gross,” Lotan whined.
Two soldiers bent down on the tree to offer their hands –
Suddenly there was movement in the moat. A row of fins like miniature stegosaurus plates broke the surface. The soldier screamed, and two seconds later he was dragged under as the brown water swirled with red.
“Holy crahp,” Drogar murmured.
“Guess Merridack wasn’t lying,” Daniel muttered.
He noted that all the soldiers took extra care crossing the fallen tree after that.
Daniel slipped through the crack in the wall and entered the sewer. Things were visible for the first few yards – then the light died, and pitch-black darkness took over twenty feet in. But there were no signs of any guards, which was excellent. Maybe Eric had forgotten about the secret passage.
Vlisil and Lotan joined him easily, though it took some groaning and huffing on Drogar’s part to force himself through the gap. The next knight in line entered, then a foot soldier after him.
They all stood on the stone platforms on either side of the sewer, which was really a deep channel of murky water that ran between the two ledges.
“Oh my God, the smell,” Lotan moaned.
“Still not as bad as Hell,” Vlisil pointed out.
“Everybody put your torches together,” Daniel said. “Siffis?”
The fire sprite stretched out one tiny hand and shot a stream of fire from his palm.
The good news was that the torches all caught fire.
The bad news was that the spout of flame immediately illuminated another fifty feet of the sewers – and the dozens of skull-faced soldiers waiting in the shadows.
“The Sorcerer King sends his regards,” the one in front roared as the soldiers attacked.
126
Eric
He got to Varidian five minutes early and hung out in the grassy common area on one of the benches. He’d been here once with Daniel and his father, years ago, back before Varidian had even started working on Shattered Lands. They’d toured the entire facility, so Eric had a fairly good idea of the layout inside.
That memory brought up a flood of emotions – back when life was simpler. Easier.
He hoped Mr. Lauer didn’t hate him too much right now.
Oh well. Even if he does, $50 billion will help me get over it.
When the timer on his cell phone reached one minute, Eric stood up and walked towards the front door. If Mike was correct, the badge would get him past reception.
If not, this was going to be a damn short trip.
He walked up to the guard station that everybody had to walk through. He lifted up the lanyard and flashed it at the guard.
It was supposed to be a casual moment. The guard was supposed to just wave him on through.
But that didn’t happen.
The guard frowned and said, “Hold up a minute and let me see that badge again.”
&nbs
p; SHIT.
Apparently they’d locked down security tighter since Eric’s hack a couple of days ago.
Either that, or Mike had lied.
Mike, you sonuvabitch, I should have cut off your balls.
Luckily, though, Eric hadn’t left anything to chance. Just in case something like this happened, he was ready.
The timer on the cell phone hit zero and buzzed in his pocket.
Suddenly all of the lights in the lobby shut off, the sprinkler system started spraying water everywhere, and a computerized voice came over the loudspeaker system:
“Attention, Varidian corporate pigs – you are being hacked.”
127
Daniel
“GO!” Daniel screamed, his voice echoing in the sewers.
He and Drogar rushed towards the armored skeletons, sword and battle ax swinging.
Metal clashed and rang out, and two skulls caved in with a CRUNCH of bone.
Vlisil raced forward, screaming and swiping his sickle. The few foot soldiers behind him surged forward as others struggled through the crack in the wall.
Lotan moaned – hesitated – and then dove head-first into the sewer water.
“Where’s he going?!” Vlisil yelled.
“I don’t know, just FIGHT!”
Daniel quickly became very thankful he’d met Siffis. The sprite leapt from Daniel’s shoulder straight into the face of the closest warrior, then let loose with a blast of fire that vaporized the soldier’s skull. The armored cadaver sank to its knees, its neck a smoking crater where its head had once been.
Siffis leapt from one soldier to the next, blasting skulls and cutting through armor, leaving behind glowing holes of molten metal. The little ignis took down a Hell soldier for every one that Daniel, Drogar, and Vlisil killed, combined.
Within sixty seconds, Daniel could see the far side of the Hell platoon over the rapidly growing pile of skull-headed corpses. There was Lotan, twenty feet away, popping up out of the water and harassing the rear guard.
Shattered Lands 2 The Fall Of Blackstone: A LitRPG Series Page 29