The Survivors Part 1: The Masacre

by Brian McGoldrick

  Power flows from the champion's hand, engulfing its weapon, an axe, in a bloody glow. It's not a weapon buff or any other type of spell I can recognize, but it carries an aura of destructive malice. This orc is as strong as the Coalescent champion Ahlred fought.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see Agun's dimensional door open. In the air over the breach in our battlements, a fiery cloud forms and begins to spin.

  Boom!

  Letting my frown turn into a mocking grin, I spring at the orc champion. Its face twisted by rage, the orc block my blow. The thunderous detonation from the impact of my buffs with its Power staggers both of us and scatters sparks and streamers of fire over a five yard radius. Not pausing, we both step back in and start chopping brutally at one another.

  There is no technique or skill to this fight. It is nothing but a contest of reflexes, brute strength, raw Power. The first blow the orc tries to take on its shields leaves the shield nearly split in two. My own battered shield is turned into scrap metal by the first few blocks.

  Behind the champion, the swirling clouds turn into a fiery funnel cloud, and the other orcs start scrambling to get out of the breach in the battlement. Along the battlements to the east of the orc shamans' wind barrier, acid rain and lightning storms are holding back the orcs.

  The only place the players are still engaged is where the orcs have already pushed out of their breach in the our battlements. There are only a hundred or so of them, and they should be killed quickly enough. Most of the players are already escaping through Agun's door.

  It looks like this is the end for me. I feel a strange sense of relief.

  Boom! Boom! Crackle-boom!

  Fireballs and lightning balls drop into the orcs watching my slug fest with their champion. As the orc jerks its head in startlement, I drive the the twisted, mangled edge of my shield into its balls. The jagged edges of rent metal tear through the orc's mail shirt, and blood sprays outward from the orcs groin.

  The orc champion looks down at its balls in shock for a few seconds, before it starts to howl in agony. I guess it takes a few seconds for the pain to register over the shock when you go from bull to ox. Before the orc can do anything but scream, the upward swing of my axe takes off its jaw and half its face.

  Thump! Thump!

  Two eight hundred plus armor-clad forms land next to me. My mind blanks from surprise, I stare at Farnulf.

  “What the fuck?”

  Farnulf grins. “I'm not letting you die yet.”

  With Farnulf grabbing me by one arm and Dacbold the other, they leap back to the safety or our retreating forces.

  CLANK! CLANK! CLANK! CLANK! CLANK! CLANK! CLANK! CLUNK-THUD!

  Even from miles away, the tremendous ratcheting sounds of a pair of doors opening in the face of the Labyrinth of Yggr rumble across the battlefield.

  “What the fuck?” My comment from earlier is unknowingly repeated by a dozen or more people.

  “I never realized there was a gate up there on the Labyrinth.” Farnulf's soft words echo my thoughts.

  “If it's something coming out of the Labyrinth, I can't imagine it being any good for us.” Dacbold's quiet comment is probably dead on. Staying here to find out what new surprises are coming is one of the worst choices we could make.

  “Everyone! Get through the dimensional door now! LET'S MOVE IT!” My bellow stirs the players who were staring at the Labyrinth into action.

  As the players move through the door, I watch the gate and the flickering scarlet glow within it. It only takes a couple of minutes for the remaining players to file through the door, and not waiting to see what might be coming out of the Labyrinth, I quickly follow them. Glancing over my shoulder, I see the door disappearing.

  Agun is sitting on the floor of the tunnel, leaning against the wall, with the lower half of his a mask of blood. Agun has pushed himself way past Mana depletion. His skin is so pale that he might well be bloodless.

  Nessa is kneeling next to him, with a sad and frustrated expression. She turns to look at me, and there is a mix of helplessness and condemnation in her eyes.

  “What was that noise?” Connor is standing next to Agun.

  “A gate that we couldn't see in the upper part of the Labyrinth opened.”

  Connor looks toward the central cavern. “Things are probably going from bad to worse.”

  “Probably.”

  As I look around, gold letters appear in the air in front of me. No one else can see them, but that doesn't make them look any less real.

  You have been invited to join Danleib's party.

  Do you accept?

  Yes. I just have to clearly form the word and intent in my mind. Unlike the party charms we were using at the start of The Great Fuck Over, the ones we improved do not require a verbal response.

  All the other Dvergar are already in the party.

  *You need to get past the blast door and block the way behind you. As soon as you do that, we'll detonate this reactor. Taking a few hundred thousand orc with me, I don't suppose that it's too bad of a way to go.* Danleib does not mince words and gets straight to the point.

  *There has to be another way out.*

  Danleib sighs. *Unless you have another Caster who can open a gate or teleport through the interference from the wild Mana, we're stuck here. I'm surprised the whisper and party charms even work. It's probably because they are primarily based on Psi.*

  None of us say anything for a few moments. With Dacbold and Farnulf, I was the last of the human players funneling through a hole in the blast door that will be a tight fit for us Dvergar. It's pretty likely that most of the orcs in this horde won't be able to squeeze through.

  Along with a group of Casters and Adepts, Ahlred and Wihtred are holding a barricade against the attacks of the orcs already inside the complex.

  *Don't give me any good of the many outweighs the good of the one bullshit.* Ahlred's vicious tone gives his words a poignant impact. There was a time long in his past, when he was in Teams, that he believed in that bullshit, as he calls it now.

  Danleib chuckles. *I stopped believing in that long ago. If you give the many an easy path by having the few pay the prices for them, they become the piece of shit sheep things you have running what used to be America today. If there was a way out, there is no way I would be sacrificing myself.*

  Connor and Nessa help Agun through the blast door. Except for us Dvergar and the rear guard, there is no one left on this side of the blast door.

  “Bring the rain!” Connor's bellow echoes inside the confined space of this tunnel corridor.

  Cackling like a lunatic, Wihtred pulls out a handful of his explosive necklaces and waves them over his head.

  “OH FUCK! RUN!” I don't know who shouted, but except for Wihtred and Ahlred, the rest of the players take off like bats out of hell.

  Boom! Boom! Boom!

  Snapping them into pieces, he hurls them among the orcs. Billowing black smoke shot through with sullen red rolls back over the two Dvergar. Orc howls of pain and rage fill the tunnel in the wake of the explosions.

  Walking out of the smoke unharmed, with Cwichelm at his side, Ahlred looks around for the Casters that ran, with a half-smile, half-sneer on his face. “You can stop cowering and drop some AoE to keep those fuckers busy for a few minutes.

  With expressions ranging from unperturbed, to embarrassed, to angered, the eleven Casters in the corridor begin casting spells. Two of the Casters with the group are the acid Casters who just arrived from the rear guard. A hell of fire, lightning, and acid fills the tunnel.

  All of the humans pass through the hole in the blast door leaving only we five Dvergar. Two of us are still below at the Mana generator. After twelve years of carrying secrets about the truth of this universe that we knew because of these Dvergar bodies, two of our number are going to die. It's not a sudden death in battle, but one that we can all see coming, and none of us can do a damn thing to stop.

  *Only the five of us are left. There a
re ton of AoEs in the corridor that should keep the orcs back for a few minute.* Even though I'm only saying the words mentally, they taste like ashes in my mouth.

  Danleib's tone is calm and collected. Resigned might be a better term for it. *Everything is ready on this end. Once you all are clear, I'll detonate the reactor. I don't know if it will go up fast or slow, but it should be fast enough to give most of those orcs a taste of hell.*

  *Logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.*

  Wihtred bristles with anger. *Fuck you, Cwichelm! I hated that stupid line. It ruined the fucking movie. You're just as important any of those fucks getting out of this alive. Hell, you're almost as important as I am!*

  Cwichelm laughs *See you on the other side. Just learn to sing before you get there.*

  Standing in the corridor, while clenching and unclenching his fists repeatedly, Wihtred looks almost ready to cry. He doesn't say anything else, before turning and squeezing through the hole in the blast door.

  *Catch you later, you damn fly boys.* Ahlred doesn't bother to hide the anger in his tone. He probably can't hide it any longer and may not even be able to control it. Where I've been teetering on the edge of a rage that could overwhelm me if I'm not careful, Ahlred seems to have been on the edge of drowning in rage since the orcs' first attacked.

  *See you around, squid.*

  The others say their goodbyes with less banter.

  *I'm sorry.*

  *What are you apologizing for? This is my choice. Though, it's not like we have fuck all for options down here. You need to stop shouldering blame that isn't rightly yours. Goodbye, Thorrin.* Danleib sounds tired, now.

  *I'll see you both on the other side.* It might not be very long before I see them again. Even with their sacrifice, I don't know how much longer I'll survive. The orcs are still here and the effects of detonating the reactor may not even get many of them.

  *Don't show up too quickly. I'll be pissed and send you back if you do. Seriously, live well my brothers. You've got thirty seconds.*

  With Cwichelm's final words echoing in our minds, the rest of us squeeze through the hole in the blast door. It's a tight fit for bodies as massive as our Dvergar bodies, but we get through it without issue. Wihtred takes out a black metal box with a single button and presses it.

  BOOOOMMMM!

  The tunnel on the other side of the blast door collapses, and dust is blown through the hold in a huge billowing cloud.

  Not waiting around we quickly move down the tunnel. Before we catch up to the stragglers among the players, I hear a faint echo of an explosion that might be Danleib's bomb.

  “That's it.” Wihtred's tone of voice is dejected, and he's looking at the ground, instead of looking ahead.

  Agun is among the last of the players. With an arm over the shoulders of the person on each side of himself, he is staggering along. His head is drooping, and blood is still trickling from his nose.

  Nessa who is one of the people he is leaning on glares at me. Her eyes seem to be filled with accusation. “Killing, killing, and more killing. That's all we do. Even if they aren't real people like us, why can't we find some other way than just killing? Look how many of us are dead. We might be next.”

  Nessa looks at Agun's face, only inches from her own, and her lips quiver. “He's destroyed his blood vessels and his nerves. I can't do anything for him. The pain is too much.”

  Looking down the tunnel toward the other players, a look of superiority quickly flashes across Nessa's face. “None of them are good enough to do anything for him. The best of them are more killer than healer.”

  Kat who is next to Tomas, the other person holding up Agun, has an ugly expression, as she stares at Nessa, but she doesn't say anything.

  I feel like I may have never seen the real Nessa. I'm not even sure this is a glimpse of the real Nessa.

  An emptiness void takes the place of my heart. Maybe Kat is right. It might be time for the Hammers to come to an end.

  Rumble. Rumble. Rumble. Boom. Rumble. Rumble. BOOM! Rumble! BOOM! RUMBLE!

  The floor of the tunnel begins to vibrate and then shake under our feet. Dust filters down from the roof, but there is no indication that it will come down on our heads.

  Dacbold grabs Agun and puts him over his shoulders in a fireman's carry.

  “I can walk.”

  “Shut up. You're too slow, and you're in my way.”

  All of us speed up to a quick jog, with the players ahead of us doing the same. There are less than four hundred people in total. Except for the rear guards from the peninsula and in the tunnel, everyone else has long since passed through the tunnel.

  As time passes, we don't slow our jog. After maybe half an hour, the rumbling stops but the humans say the tunnel is getting hot. With my Dvergar body, I can't tell how bad it is. The tunnel is definitely warmer, but the tolerance of Dvergar body make everything from arctic cold to boiling water within our range of tolerance.

  By the time we reach the upward slope of the tunnel, it has only been forty-five minutes since the first rumbling, but there is the clear smell of molten stone in the air. Looking back I see a faint orange glow down the tunnel.

  A shiver runs down my spine. Molten lava is so far out of the range of Dvergar tolerance that our bodies may as well be human. Despite the rubble from digging through the plug on the tunnel littering the tunnel floor, I involuntarily increase my pace, and the others do as well.

  At the top of the sloping tunnel, there is a round six foot wide by seven foot high rough tunnel bored through the old lava flow. After fifty-odd yards, we reach a natural cave, with daylight visible ahead.

  Leaving the cave, we find the rest of the survivors. At a quick glance, there looks to be a bit over twelve hundred people, maybe thirteen hundred. Not counting the who knows how many players that were enslaved, we have less the five percent of the number of people who walked out of the Labyrinth a week ago.

  “Is this what you call winning?” Wihtred's anger turns his voice into a vicious snarl.

  “At best, it's a pyrrhic victory.” Farnulf's mournful tone matches his bleak expression.

  “We need to get everyone away from the mouth of this cave, to higher ground. If that lava we saw makes it here, we'll be in trouble.” Suiting actions to his words, Connor starts contacting the surviving guild leaders via whispers.

  As we move up the side of the mountain, toward a plateau to the north of the cave, the rest of the players follow in a ragged migration.

  After pulling blankets from a storage ring, Dacbold lays Agun down. Agun sighs and stares up at the midday sky. The whites of his eyes are a bloody red.

  *Ahlred.* I gesture toward Agun with my chin.

  Ahlred shakes his head faintly. *He's dying.*

  All the other Dvergar heard Ahlred's words in the party channel, and Dacbold squats next to Agun.

  Agun smiles, showing his bloody teeth. “You know it hurts like hell to push yourself this far, but I couldn't leave you to die.”

  With his face scrunched up from pain, Agun pauses for a moment. “The rest of my friends died in Ashir's Pass. Dark Guardian abandoned us. The lines broke, and they died. I'm the only survivor from Silver Horn that didn't run with Dark.”

  “Do you want them to die?” Dacbold's voice is cold.

  “I was going to kill Dark myself. I didn't think I would have the time to get the rest of them, though.”

  “I understand.”

  Agun smiles and stares at the sky again. “Now that the storm is over, it's such a beautiful blue.”

  After squatting next to Agun for a few minutes, Dacbold reaches out and closes his sightless eyes. Agun is dead.

  Rising to his feet, Dacbold takes out his axe and holds it with the top of his hand against the head. Striking the center of his chest with his closed fist and the flat of his axe, Dacbold stands with his back ramrod straight facing Agun's corpse. Starting with Ahlred, one by one, the rest of us do the same. This
is the Dvergar way to salute one of superior rank or one deserving of honorable recognition.

  After a minute, Dacbold turns and scans the surviving players. Locking his gaze on Dark Guardian, Dacbold stalks toward him. The raw menace and hostility in Dacbold's bearing draw the attention of most of the players, but no one makes a move toward.

  “Thorrin! Stop him!”

  I turn to look at Nessa. She is the living picture of righteous outrage.

  “Why?”

  Nessa looks at me like I've suddenly grown three heads. “He's going to kill them! That's murder! You can't let him do that! They're real people! They're from Earth like us!”

  Crack!

  “Shut up, Nessa!”

  A brilliant red palm print on her cheek, Nessa stares at Kat flabbergasted.

  “You never took a life when we've been attacked. People have died right in front of you so that you could live. You may be one of our healers, but you've become a hypocritical little bitch.”

  More than a little fear in her eyes, Nessa backs away. Her new boyfriend, Elijah, wraps his arms around her, and she doesn't struggle. That one is more suited to her than Talon ever would have been. He pretty much has no balls, and after The Great Fuck Over started, he almost never actually killed anyone. Considering the disdain she's been showing for us killers in the past couple days, I don't understand why Talon ever caught her interest.

  “You're only a kid on Earth. You never went to war. You were never betrayed by the nation you fought for. You never had your beliefs criminalized and your freedom stolen by the ungrateful fucks you fought to protect. You still seem to be under the delusion that this world is somehow less real than Earth.

  “Agun's friends died when Dark Guardian betrayed them. Agun died before he could avenge them. Dacbold is a man who never had many friends. He is taking revenge in his friend's name. Who the fuck do you think you are to try and stop him?”

  Nessa stares at me aghast, and Elijah looks at me with fear in his eyes.

  Dacbold close with Dark Guardian, who is half hiding behind Forever and Eternity. The naked fear on Dark Guardian's face is almost comical to behold, but Dacbold isn't laughing.