The Survivors Part 1: The Masacre

by Brian McGoldrick

  “And look at us! We're sitting in the middle of a rain storm, with hundreds of thousands of orcs looking for the chance to ass-rape, maim, torture, and kill us, not necessarily in that order mind you. So, why the fuck am I still hung up on and bitching about the fucking shit hole of a fucked over world I'll probably never see again?”

  After a moment of silence, with Kamehameha staring at Danleib in a mix of confusion and wide-eyed horror, I just can't keep my mouth shut. “They are fucking orcs, so they're just as likely to start with a kill followed by ass-rape.”

  Trying to keep a straight face, Danleib looks at me for a few seconds and breaks out in laughter. With his laughter provoking me, I can't keep my frown in place or hold back my own laughter.

  “Brother, are you sure you were a psychiatric counselor?” As he walks out of the darkness, Cwichelm's voice reaches us.

  Following a few paces behind Cwichelm, Dacbold enters the camp and nods toward me. Next to him is a man who goes by the name Agun. He's one of the Casters among the players, but not someone that I know well.

  Danleib shrugs. “Heh, they took my license after I taught a rape victim how to use a knife. Another south of the border migrant tried to rape her, and she gutted him like fish. The pigs and the district shyster wanted to prosecute me as an accessory to murder, but there was no social camera footage of me teaching her. The social cameras were always going on the fritz in that clinic. Damn shame that.”

  “You were always too soft-hearted. How the hell such a sap ever became a top Red Flag pilot is beyond me. Where are you perfect eagles?”

  “Out earning their keep.”

  “Your constructs are good, but if you want them to be perfect, you need more black ones.”

  Danleib holds up his first in a black power salute. “Soul, brother!”

  Cwichelm snorts. “You will always be too white to be doing that.”

  Cwichelm was a Marine pilot and Danleib was an Air Force pilot. I have no idea how the met, but the pair of them have been like blood related brothers since the first time I met them. They have the same terrible taste in movies. The worse a movie is, the better they seem to like it. I can't remember the name of that damned movie or much else about it. I just remember the black robot. The two of them could probably quote every line of that shitty movie from memory, along with hundreds of other movies just as bad.

  “And how are we supposed to sleep with all of you making such a racket right outside our tents? Can't you take your horror fantasies and go keep some others awake? There's a whole camp full of orcs just east of here. I'm sure they would hate being kept awake by your insane ramblings.” Standing in the open flap of her tent, with her tightly clenched fists on her hips, Nessa is glaring at the group of us. Her face is the perfect picture of righteous indignation, and her head is tilted back slightly, as if she is looking down her nose at us. A wave of tousled brown hair is draped across her shoulders, and a blanket is wrapped around her body.

  When The Great Fuck Over happened, Nessa was only sixteen. For her, Taereun had been nothing but a wondrous game. Now, she acts like everything is nothing but a nightmare, and she will return to her normal like as soon as she wakes up. In nearly twelve years, she has barely changed in her views or attitudes. Danleib calls it a mix of denial and post traumatic stress, but as he does with anyone and everyone else, he refuses to treat her. Her body still looks to be in its late teens, the same as it has for almost twelve years. The lack of physical aging is the same as everyone else who became caught up in the Great Fuck Over.

  Nessa will fight but refuses to kill anyone or anything. She has several healing arts that she uses to treat the injured, and a couple of them border on miraculous. As the years of bloody battles have dragged on, she has become more and more convinced that she is better than the rest of us who kill to survive, but if we did not do the killing, how would she be able to survive without killing?

  Behind her, inside her tent, a boy who looks to be barely over twenty is scrambling to get dressed. He was her friend on Earth and started playing Taereun to sniff after her. After living through twelve years of near hell, to chase a piece of ass, he has finally nailed it. Until Talon was murdered his chances of actually getting Nessa were slim to none, but now that Talon's dead, she's finally spread her legs for her fallback.

  “You should be sleeping, girl.”

  Nessa fixes her general glare on me. “I was trying to sleep, old man, but a pack of warmongering, argumentative old coots are parked outside my tent. There probably isn't anyone in the camp or any other camp near us that is sleeping with the lot of you yelling and carrying on like you are.”

  Danleib cocks his head to the side, making an exaggerated show of looking into her tent. “Ah, so that's what you call it. Sleeping, I'll remember that.”

  Her cheeks flushing red, Nessa glares at Danleib. “Dirty old man!”

  Spinning around, she ducks back inside her tent and closes the flaps. “What are you getting dressed for we're not done sleeping! I'll be damned if those old men are going to look down on me.”

  “She's still mad that you wouldn't let her up on the wall?”

  I shrug. “More likely, she's mad I didn't miraculously save everyone without killing a single orc in the process.”

  Dacbold glances at Nessa's tent. “She's turned into a little, holier than thou bitch.”

  “Yeah, there's that too.” Suddenly, I'm nearly overwhelmed by a weariness that is not physical in origin.

  I'm not as close with my guild's members as I was when The Great Fuck over started. I'm not sure if it's because of the changes in me or the changes in them. If I haven't learned anything else in my life, I have, at least, learned that nothing ever stays the same. No matter how you may try to hang onto the shape and essence of a moment, it will always slip away from you. If you try to remain static, life will run you over and leave you behind as the dust of the past. To live, you have to accept or oppose the changes and keep moving forward, but right now, I'm feeling too tired to keep struggling forward.

  “Thorrin, there is something I need you to look at.”

  Dacbold's words draw me partly out of my morass of ennui, and I look at him. “What is it?”

  Dacbold points toward the west. “They valley. After you tell me what you see, I'll explain why.”

  I glance and Danleib, and he just shrugs. I want to know more, but I know from years of experience, since Dacbold didn't elaborate you couldn't pull anymore out of him no matter how you tried.

  I stand up and start walking toward the valley. “Okay, let's go.”

  “Not like that. Agun!”

  Turning, I see Agun silently drawing a spell pattern. The pattern is extremely complex, and it takes him close to a minute to complete it. Physically drawing the pattern is usually the sign of the school of Caster philosophy called Wizardry, but it's not always the case. I've never spoken much with Agun and do not know much about the school he or the person whose body he possesses follows.

  As he finish casting a silvery-grey lintel forms from the spell pattern and a door opens. On the far side of the door a windswept expanse of stone becomes visible. Agun is one of the small handful of players that has abilities associated with spatial magic.

  Stepping through the door, I find myself on top of the ridge on our north side. As I look toward the north, I can just barely see another ridge two miles or so away, but the bulk of the ridge I'm standing on blocks my view of the valley between them. Looking to the west, the bowl valley opens out below me. Despite the dark stormy night, my Dvergar eyes can see well enough to make out the general features of the valley.

  At it's deepest, the roughly circular valley cuts through most of the two mile thick ridge. The walls of the valley have a much gentler slope than the rest of the ridge along the coastline. The walls have a roughly even slope toward the center of the valley The center of the valley is below sea level and has a pool of water filling it. Its elevation rises toward the water, and the coastline there h
as a lot more large boulders than the rest of the shore in this area. In places, the stone of the valley walls has an odd appearance, almost like an ancient lava flow. The only thing is this ridge isn't volcanic stone.

  Looking at the Labyrinth rising above the storm tossed sea to the south, I squint a bit as I evaluate the nearest of the stone and rubble piles around it.

  I turn to Dacbold, who has been watching me. “That looks like a blast crater, but the boulders and the valley walls are a lot more heavily weathered than the stone dug up around the Labyrinth. Is there something else significant about it?”

  Dacbold nods. “I had one of the geomancers with a strong stone sounding spell do some checking. There appear to be tunnels under the valley floor, but of the ones he found, the closest they come to the surface is about fifteen feet. He wasn't certain, but he thinks the tunnels are more or less rectangular.

  “You were a tanker. You would say that is definitely a blast crater and not an impact crater?”

  I look at the valley again. “Yeah, that is definitely a blast crater. I've see enough to be pretty certain.”

  Dacbold was a combat engineer. He should be a better judge of the difference between a blast crater and an impact crater than I am. Despite being an engineer, he has an odd personality and doesn't like trying to force his ideas down people's throats. He'll drop the hints and let them reach the conclusions he seems to want.

  “Do you think there is still something there that could be of use to us?”

  Dacbold shrugs slightly. “We're dead if we don't create a miracle. I can't fortify that peninsula well enough in the next day or so for us to survive with that horde looking to kill us. There was something in there that was able to detonate with enough force to blow out around a cubic mile of stone, and there are still tunnels underneath. The geomancers tell me that there is something down there that is keeping them from probing too deeply. At best they can probe about fifteen feet below the ground level in the middle of the valley.”

  “Is there a way into those tunnels?”

  “A couple of the geomancers can make one.”

  Looking at the weathered stone of the valley walls, I don't exactly feel hopeful. “You realize that explosion happened one hell of a long time ago. After tens of thousands of years, there may be nothing worthwhile left under there.”

  Dacbold nods. “It's probably more like hundreds of thousands, but there is still something that blocks magic probing. Do you have any miracles in your bag of holding?”

  “I'm fresh out. Let's talk to Connor.”

  The Fourth Day

  The Great Fuck Over Day 4,184

  Dawn is still more than an hour away, but a dozen of us are clustered in the northeast end of the valley. Besides myself, Danleib, Dacbold, Cwichelm and Agun, there is Connor with a couple of other guild leaders and their guild officers, a pair of geomancers, and Kamehameha.

  The circular hole in the valley floor is close to thirty feet deep. Danleib's clockwork sparrow drops down the shaft, and an image of the tunnel below shows up in grey scale above his projection device.

  Dirt or dust covers the floor, but the walls are smooth stone. It was clearly worked and finished by someone or something in the past. The floor of the tunnel is sloped, and going up about ten or so feet from where our shaft cuts into it, the tunnel in a wall of roughly agglomerated stone. From its appearance, at some point in the past, that stone melted and flowed into the tunnel blocking it.

  “Whatever caused the explosion that made this crater, it was hot enough to melt the stone. If there is anything left in there, we might be able to show the orcs what hell feels like.” Connor stops speaking and looks to the west.

  As he listens to someone communicating with him through a whisper charm, Connor's face turns grim. “The orcs are at the west wall. More of them have been scouting the cliffs on the north side of the ridge, probably looking for a good what to climb it. We have no way out of this if we can't find a way back into the Labyrinth. Our only other hope is if you find something in there.”

  I meet Connor's eyes. “This place is old. Even if the Casters can't scan too deep, we're probably grasping at straws, if we're looking for salvation.”

  “I'll take any straw you can find.”

  I look at Agun. “You ready.”

  He nods. “Anytime.”

  “Okay, do it.”

  Agun draws his spell pattern again, and the grey outline of a doorjamb with a wide lintel appear in midair. Runes that I can't read and scrollwork decorate the lintel. When Agun knocks on the seemingly thin air inside the doorjamb, a dimensional door opens between the valley floor and the tunnel below. Myself, Cwichelm, Danleib, and Agun step through it. Agun has a light crystal torch in hand, but should we need to, we Dvergar can see in pitch blackness.

  Even with the shaft letting in fresh air, the air has a stale smell. We may wind up needing the handful of rebreathers that Danleib has. As the tunnel slopes down, it curves in a clockwise direction. The unpainted walls and roof, which appear to have been carved out of the surrounding stone, are perfectly smooth with right angle corners between them. There are no signs of any lighting or any other fixtures.

  Picking up a handful of the dirt on the floor, I find it had a gritty texture but does not seem like naturally occurring dirt or sand. I pass the dirt do Dacbold.

  “Take a look at this.”

  Dacbold takes out a crystal magnifier and examines the dirt. “I don't think its stone, and it doesn't seem like decomposed vegetation. I don't have the equipment to test it, but it seems like a carbon compound.”

  “You mean like quartz?”

  Dacbold brings out metal plates and creates a blue-white fire on it, dumping the gritty dirt into it. The dirt seems to burn a little but not quickly. “More like coal, but it doesn't seem to be as combustible. I'd like to know what this stuff is.”

  *Can you hear me?*

  *Yeah, though it sounds odd.* Connor's voice has a tinny sound to it. It's the first time I've ever heard a “voice” come across a whisper or party charm like that.

  *Same for you. I'm going to go deeper. Let's see if we lose connection when I get past the depth the geomancer's spells stop working.*

  “Wait here.” I start walking down the sloping tunnel.

  *Start talking.*

  *There is a lot of unrest among the Damned. Dark Guardian's been acting suspiciously. So have a few of the others Pancho shamed. I can't imagine ….*

  When Connor's voice suddenly cuts out, I've traveled about three-quarters of a circle from my starting point.

  *Connor? Do you hear me? Yo?*

  I can still feel the channel from the whisper charm, but there doesn't seem to be anything being transmitted. I start retracing my steps until I hear a voice again.

  *... because you didn't tell them about what you knew.*

  *Connor, I lost you just a step beyond where I'm at.*

  *Not good.*

  *No, but the whisper channel still seemed to be open. I'm going back in again. Wait fifteen seconds and kill the whisper channel.*

  *Got it.*

  *Okay, moving now. Do it in fifteen.*

  I walk back into the dead zone and wait. After maybe sixteen or seventeen seconds that whisper channel breaks, and I return to the dimensional door that Agun set up.

  I pass a special charm to Connor through the dimensional door. With the same type of charm, I bind him to it and open a channel.

  “Bind me and open a channel. I call that a dead-man charm. As long as you keep it on you, the channel stays open until you deliberately close it or die. The same goes for mine. We may not be able to communicate, but we can use it to let each other know the shit has hit the fan.”

  After staring at me for a moment, Connor nods. “Got it.”

  I look at the three with me. “Let's go.”

  The spiral ramp corkscrews down through seven full turns, about five hundred to six hundred feet by my estimate. At its end, the tunnel opens out into a huge c
avernous space, lit by a faint, sourceless, greyish light. It's hard to accurately measure it by eyeball, but it looks like this cavern is larger than the valley crater above. The two main reason the giant space's dimensions are hard to estimate are the irregularity of the walls and the uneven column of stone in the center. This cavern or room appears to have been a natural cavern that was deliberately enlarged by intelligent beings. A stagnant briny smell fills the air, but I don't get the feeling that it's noxious.

  The giant column of stone appears to have fallen from the roof of the cavern as molten stone and solidified in the process. From where I am standing, the point where the column of stone meets the roof of the cavern has extremely straight lines of demarcation that meet at right angle corners.

  “What do you say, about three-fifty to four hundred feet from floor to ceiling?” Danleib's question is muttered in a pensive tone, sounding almost rhetorical.

  Cwichelm scratches his chin through his beard. “Closer to the four hundred side. Looks like that stone came from an almost perfectly leveled and squared off tunnel in the ceiling.”

  Piles of corroding metal and other substances are scattered around the chamber. Along the walls and in certain places those piles appear to have once been some kind of equipment laid out in even rows. The metal remains are mix of gray and black, porous, fragile material.

  Danleib picks up some of the corroded metal, breaking it apart and examining it. “I have no idea what kind of metal this is. I've never heard of anything that corrodes in this manner.”

  Screech-scrape thud. Screech-scrape thud. Screech-scrape thud.

  Echoes make is a bit difficult to be certain, but the sounds seem to come from the other side of the stone slag column in the center of the room. The four of us look at one another and spread out, with we four Dvergar in the front and Agun behind us. I don't know how strong his combat ability is; I want him for his movement abilities.