The Survivors Part 1: The Masacre

by Brian McGoldrick

  After picking up pieces of the armor ripped off the construct and casting some spells, the Casters look around in confusion and start whispering to each other again. Seeming to come to a conclusion, the three walk over to me, with the slightly taller male in the lead.

  “Mr. Thorrin, there is something blocking our detection and analysis spells. We aren't going to be much use to you in here. Do you want us to go back again?” Since he actually says “Mr.” in English, his mini-spiel sounds a little weird.

  “I want you to open a blast door, not analyze it.”

  The look he gives me makes it seem that he thinks I'm an idiot and is afraid to say it. “If we don't analyze the door, we can't open it.”

  “It's metal. I expect you to use spells to cut it open.”

  The Caster looks slightly taken aback. “It's okay to break it?”

  “Of course.”

  The three Casters exchange looks and whisper together again. Before they hide them, grins appear briefly on their face.

  “Where is the door?”

  As I lead them down the corridor, I have the feeling that something is definitely off about these three, but I can't figure them out well enough to understand it. They have a lack of maturity and presence that doesn't sit well with me. It's not like they were teenagers when The Great Fuck Over began and haven't grown up; they are more like an animal that was never socialized and doesn't know how to interact with other animals or people. Before the Great Fuck Over, Taereun: Battleground of the Damned was a refuge for all kinds of people, and some like them, just fit in with the rest of the world even more poorly than a bunch of tired old vets who lost the country they fought for to the warped insanity of the modern culture.

  Seeing the blast door, the three Casters run past me and begin examining it. Even though they know the spells won't work, the still cast dozens of detection or analysis spell on the door. With each failure, they look over their shoulders at me, before whispering together about the results.

  “Get it in gear! The orcs aren't going to stand around waiting for you find out what's in there.” After close to fifteen minutes, I'm losing my patience with them. They are even worse than some of the out of touch with reality American otaku types I had to deal with as a programmer and IT manager.

  “My Crass Detection and Analysis of Metallic Structures formation just worked!” The female Caster's exclamation is almost a shriek of joy.

  Her spell worked? I immediately open a whisper channel to Danleib.

  *Danleib! Can you hear me?*

  *Talk about mental shouting. You sound like a kid getting his favorite Power Ranger toy at Christmas.* The sarcasm carries clearly through the primarily Psi based channel of the whisper charm.

  *You're showing your age again.*

  *Don't take after Wihtred. It's unbecoming for an elderly man, one older than me, to be so childish, and I'm still not ashamed of my age.*

  Danleib's comments almost make me laugh, and I have to fight to keep my frown in place. *Are you coming back up?*

  *Well, we might have a little problem there. You did say that there was another ramp leading down opposite the one we used, right?*

  I get a cold feeling in the pit of my stomach. *Yes. Why?*

  Danleib sighs. *I cut the conduit. There is a ton of distortion from wild Mana escaping from the broken conduit, but our whisper charms are obviously working. Five of the constructs took off up the opposite ramp. One of them broke through the grating bridging the lava channel between the central area and the tunnel, but the rest just walked over the top of it. They were moving way to fast for us to outrun them.*

  *Tell Cwichelm to get Agun to open a dimensional door to get out of there.*

  *Not yet. Before we leave, I want to see what these constructs are doing. I sent a bird up to the broadcaster room, and we'll decide what to do base on what the constructs do. You better be ready for them to come up after you.*

  *Damn it all to Hell! Keep me posted.*

  *Will do.* Danleib breaks the whisper channel.

  I turn to the three Casters.

  “Well, can you open it?”

  The taller one looks at me bobbling his head. He seems to be their designated spokesman.

  “We can do it, but it's going to take a few hours.”

  It feels like the other two are using him as a buffer against the rest of the world. I still haven't asked their names, but their personalities make me not really care what they are. If I didn't need them right now, I would not have anything to do with them. In IT, I was forced to deal with people that can't even develop enough character to face the world head on. Too many years of that bullshit has left me with an aversion to people like them.

  “Then, do it!”

  After the taller one bobbles his head for seconds, the three of them begin to work on their spells again.

  I open a whisper channel to Connor. *Connor, we may have a real problem.*

  While briefing Connor on the constructs, I move to the south tunnel. There isn't any sign of the constructs moving up the ramp yet, but if they do, we need to get our people out of here quickly. With their lightning field, undamaged constructs may prove unstoppable.

  Less than ten seconds after I get there, Dacbold and the players Connor sent with him come around the last turn in the tunnel. He stops dead and looks at me for a few seconds.

  “Danleib already told me about the constructs.”

  I nod to Dacbold. *There is no sign of the constructs, but you better post someone here to keep any eye out. Dacbold is back with the people you sent with him.*

  *Tell them to stand watch there. I have other problems to deal with. The orcs are up to something.* Connor breaks the whisper connection.

  “Connor says to keep watch here. If those constructs come up here, do not try to fight them, just sound the warning. They can project a lightning field. If you touch it, it will probably one shot you.”

  After the human players acknowledge the orders, I return to the blast door with Dacbold walking at my side. When we arrive the taller Caster turns half toward us. He stares at my feet for about fifteen seconds without saying anything.

  “What do you want?”

  “With our detection spells working, we found out what is on the other side of this door. It's just a tunnel. Do you still want us to break it down?” He sounds like a kid that is afraid of me taking away his toys.

  “What is at the end of the tunnel?”

  The taller Caster shrugs. “I don't know. Our detection spells only work to about two hundred yards at most.”

  “Break it down. No matter what we find, we'll probably need to get in there.”

  The taller Caster immediately perks up and turns all the way around to face me, but he still doesn't meet my eyes. “Great! We'll break it open!”

  Turning back to the door, he whispers to the other two. The taller Caster stands facing the door with the other two on his right and left facing each other. As the three draw spell patterns in the air in front of themselves, blue-white light the size of a basketball forms in between the two facing one another. The taller one holds his hands in front of his chest, thumbs and index fingers touching in a triangular shape and a baseball size ball of blue-white light forms in front of his hands.

  When the three of them speak what must be an activation phrase, a beam of light connects the taller Caster's ball or light with the other one, and another beam of light hits the surface of the blast door. Almost immediately the surface of the door under the beam of light turns cherry red and sparks begin to fly.

  Dacbold raises his eyebrows. “A cutting laser. Interesting.”

  I don't have Agun's aura burned into a whisper charm, but Dacbold does. While he calls Agun I contact Cwichelm. *Cwichelm, how is going down there?*

  *We may have really screwed the Taco Hell Chihuahua with Godzilla's dick. Two of the constructs came down the tunnel we used. The other three are back in the generator room. They aren't coming out on the catwalk, but if we make leave
here, there is no telling what the constructs will do. Also, the crystals on their arms are more lighting projectors.*

  I feel like screaming and cursing, but I manage to keep it to a sigh. *There is a tunnel on the other side of the blast door. While the three geeks are cutting open the door, I need to have Agun scan the tunnel. So while I'm checking on you, Dacbold is getting him down here.*

  *You don't have his imprint do you?*

  *No. Why?*

  Cwichelm chuckles tauntingly. *You're really not acting like yourself. Normally, you would be the first one to get an imprint of someone you just met on a whisper charm. If you don't get your head straightened out, you're probably gonna wind up dead before this is all over.*

  *I've been getting enough of that out of Danleib; I don't need it from you too.*

  *No problem. Just, please, don't die on me, Thorrin. I've lost too many friends. We've all lost too many friends.*

  I can't believe Cwichelm is actually thinking we'll survive. It may just be that if he admits we're completely one hundred percent fucked, he won't be able to handle it and will break down.

  *I don't plan on dying here.*

  Cwichelm doesn't say anything else before breaking the connection.

  It only takes a few minutes for Agun to arrive, moving at a quick jogging pace. Unlike the Caster trio, he show a remarkable level physical fitness. Despite being whipcord lean, he is all wiry muscle and bone.

  I don't wait for him to say anything. “With the interference down, your friends have found there is a tunnel on the other side, but they can only see a couple hundred yards and don't know where it ends. They extolled the virtues of your magic.”

  Agun frowns. “My range is only about seven or eight times that. If the tunnel is longer that, I won't be able to see the end of it. It would be easier to just open a door and follow the tunnel to the end.”

  I nod. “That works. Do it for me.”

  While Agun casts his spells, I take out a whisper charm and record his imprint on it. In the past, I would have probably done this not long after Cwichelm brought him to meet me last night. Was it really just last night? It feels like days or weeks have passed in a single night and day's time.

  Cwichelm is right. I have not been acting like myself recently. Caught between feelings of ennui and hopelessness, I have been on the edge of burning out for the past couple of years, but now I'm in the middle between those feeling on one side and the drive and rage of a born Dvergar warrior on the other. Talon's death and the surge or emotions that seem to originate in this body finished off something that has been building for years. Since he was murdered, I have really been acting abnormally, but I don't understand why. He's not the only person I've cared about that died, and I don't even know if he was my friend or not. I was always a friend to him, but he kept anyone and everyone at a certain distance. So, why was his death the trigger?

  Despite what happened to me in my real life, I was still always a very social person in the game. I was always attempting to broaden my network of contacts and would never pass up the chance to add people to my whisper charms. That was different from how I was on Earth. On Earth, except for other veterans or gamers, I had mostly cut myself off from the world.

  I was married three times. Why can't I remember what my second wife looked like or a single thing about her? I remember being captured by DokkAlfar slavers like it really happened to me, but I can barely remember anything from my human childhood. When my clan was killed, and I was taken by slavers, I was only two years old, which is the equivalent of about five for a human. Why can I remember being enslaved but not my real childhood? Which is my real childhood now?

  Am I no longer Harold T. Sawyer? Am I the Thorrin Hammerfist that once occupied this body of mine? Have I become someone else? Now, I don't know what I am becoming. I don't know if the other six are in the same condition. I'm afraid to ask.

  Even though I am not sure who I am, I don't want to go back to Earth. There is nothing left for me on Earth. Everything was crumbling around me. The only people I could maintain any type of friendship with were a handful of veterans and some other Taereun players. What is there to go back to?

  “Thorrin!”

  I don't know how long Agun has been trying to get my attention. His eyes are narrowed, and there is a slightly worried expression on his face.

  “Are you alright?”

  “Yeah. Sorry. I was just thinking about something and not paying attention. Sorry.” I don't have time to deal with my issues right now. We have to get out of this alive for any of my personal baggage to matter.

  Looking behind Agun, the silvery-grey doorjamb with a door opening into the tunnel beyond the blast door awaits. Squaring my shoulders, I step forward.

  “Alright, let's do this!”

  Stepping through the dimensional door, the air on the other side is staler than in the complex, but it doesn't seem poisonous. The tunnel was carved out of the raw bedrock, with the walls, floor, and ceiling each being the same length, making it a perfect square. A thick layer of dust has settled on the floor of the tunnel, and there is a little bit of the black carbon based grit, but there is not sound and no sign of anything moving.

  Agun is staring at the walls of the tunnel. There are lines etched into the walls and roof of the tunnel. Sweeping, aside some of the dust on the tunnel floor, I find more of the same kind or lines. It seems to be the same basic design repeated over and over again, with minor variations between the repetitions. They look like a spell formations.

  “Is something the matter?”

  Agun starts to nod but turns it into a head shaking motion. “I don't think so. These sigils are still active. My detection spells are being warped. If I didn't know this was a tunnel, I would think there was no world beyond it. I'm pretty certain it works in the same way from the outside. If you aren't lined up perfectly with the blast door, this tunnel is undetectable. Anyone on the surface that doesn't know it exists will never be able to find it.”

  “Interesting. A concealed tunnel. Let's see where it leads to.”

  Having seen Agun jogging when he reached the blast door, I set out at a fast jog for a human, even a human of the Labyrinth. He is not using a light source, and I don't know what kind of spell he is using to see in the pitch blackness. After ten minutes, since he shows no signs of fatigue, I maintain the same pace.

  As the monotonous, never changing walls and floor of the tunnel pass by, we cover more than fifteen miles, until the tunnel slopes upward at about a thirty-five degree angle. I stop for a moment and stare into the darkness.

  Looking up the tunnel, Agun frowns and squints. “There is a bit over a mile, maybe a mile and a half, till the end of the tunnel. It looks like a lava flow has sealed it off at that point, but I can't tell where the lava flow came from. It's maybe fifty or sixty yards thick with a cave on the far side, but there is no sign of flues or any other source for the solidified lava.”

  I still can't tell what kind of spell or device he might be using to see, but I suppose it really doesn't matter.

  “Do you have any idea how long it would take our geomancers to cut through that much stone?”

  “Assuming Selvans is still alive, they should be able to do it in six or seven hours at most, but it would probably be a lot faster.”

  I use an improved party charm and create a party with Agun, but when I try to use the whisper charm imprint to invite the other Dvergar and Connor, it fails. The same thing happens when I try to contact them with the whisper charm.

  “I can't use a party or whisper charm to reach the other. Can you get us out of this tunnel from here?”

  Agun looks back the way we came from, his face a mask of concern. “My spells can see through the blast door, even if they don't get past the tunnel walls. The sigils here seem to have some kind of warping effect on space. Someone went of their way to make this tunnel hard to find, but I should be able to get us out as long as I do it in a straight line through the blast door.”


  After we step through the dimensional door back into the main complex, my party charm works again. Using whisper charm imprints, I bring the other Dvergar and Connor into the party and pass leadership to Connor. He brings in the other surviving guild leaders.

  Agun stares at me with his face showing blatant surprise.

  “We improved some things. Don't talk about it. We don't want word of what we've been up to getting to Thug Horde.”

  Agun nods in acknowledgment. “I would expect there to still be Thug Horde sympathizers among the survivors.”

  I don't try to hold back my snort of anger. “There are probably more than just sympathizers among us. I'm sure we have a few Thug Horde sleepers around.”

  Connor doesn't say anything until it's obvious no one else is joining.*What's going on, Thorrin?*

  *The tunnel runs more than fifteen miles, and the end is plugged with solidified lava. We're going to need geomancers to cut through it, but we have a way out. The other end should be on the far side of that mountain to our west.*

  The sense of relief and hope is obvious though the party channel. After we improved the party charms, they began carrying clear emotional impressions.

  *Agun, how long will it take you to get everyone into the tunnels?* Connor sounds distracted. He is probably already planning how to get the rearguard out alive.

  *How many people are left? How many made it to the peninsula?*

  *There are somewhere between fifteen and sixteen hundred.*

  Fifteen to sixteen hundred out of more than thirty thousand. We've effectively been wiped out as and expeditionary force. The quest to reach haven is probably over, but if anyone is thinking about it, no one is mentioning it.

  Even though the others cannot see it, Agun's face has a strained expression. *If someone has enough Power batteries that I can drain, it'll take twelve hours, maybe longer. The last two hundred fifty to three hundred people will have to wait for two hours or so, while I build up enough Mana to get them out in one shot. I'll be useless for a couple days after that.*

  *What do you mean?* There is a hard, questioning tone to Connor's words.