“Um, was it maybe the orcs nearby who kept you from opening the door?”
Leila turned and blinked. “Oh. I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Yeah, well let’s hope having an orc army descending on us doesn’t rise to the level of having enemies nearby,” I muttered.
“It probably would, but the door is open. Still, ideally we need to get in before they see there’s a door here.”
“Should I pull the soldiers in?” I asked as the door in the tree swung open. One moment the tree was nothing but bark, and the next there was a door happy as could be ready to save our asses.
“That would be a good idea,” Leila said. “They won’t be able to get to the high canopy from here.”
“Right,” I said, giving a mental command to the elves to pull back. A couple of them were already engaged in combat harassing the orcs, and at least one of them had been surrounded and it didn’t look like he was getting out of there.
I felt a pang of regret knowing some of my guys were going to bite it out there. I thought about seeing what he saw, and suddenly I was in tactical view hurtling down towards the forest. Only this time I slammed into the elf’s head and could see what he saw.
It wasn’t pretty. Orcs were climbing the tree and trying to get to him. He was giving as good as he got, firing those magical bolts down at them and making their assault of his tree costly, but it was clear this Dark Lady bitch had thrown enough mooks at the situation that there was no question they were going to get through sooner rather than later.
I pulled out and looked at the clearing. The elf soldiers who’d managed to disengage and slip through the trees were coming into the clearing and heading for the exit.
“We have a couple who aren’t going to make it,” I said, turning to Leila. “I don’t suppose you have anything in there that would be able to cut a path to them and save their asses?”
Her face fell and her shoulders slumped. “I’m afraid I do not.”
“I was afraid you were going to say that,” I said.
“Hold on,” Rachel said. “You can’t seriously be thinking about leaving some of your soldiers behind, can you?”
I pulled out to the tactical view again. There were two soldiers surrounded by so many red circles that there was no way they were going to be able to escape.
I pulled out of tactical view. Eleric had moved up to stand next to me and Rachel, and he was doing a very good job of not noting the fact that the human girl in the clearing was wearing practically nothing.
Though she did jump when she realized he was standing there and started pulling her clothes on. She wasn’t moving fast or anything, she didn’t seem like she was in a particular hurry to get clothed, but there was some semblance of modesty left over from the old world.
“If we don’t leave them behind we’re sacrificing the entire group,” I said. “We can’t do that.”
I looked at Eleric to see if there was going to be any fight from him. He didn’t strike me as the type who’d make a pointless heroic sacrifice to save soldiers who were already dead, but you never knew how someone would react to a situation like this.
I especially didn’t know how someone would react to a situation like this considering I’d never been in a situation like this before. There were some older dudes in some of my classes who’d been in the military and had clearly seen some shit before they decided to cash in the GI Bill and get an education, but all that stuff had been winding down by the time I was of military age.
Not that I was interested in military conflict outside of the computer to begin with, though it seemed like the universe had the last laugh on that score.
Eleric nodded. “They’re already dead. We have to move on, or we’re going to be dead too. They knew this could happen when they took up the spear.”
“I don’t like this,” Rachel said. “I never left anyone behind.”
I noticed something odd as she said it. Leila, the elf captain, and the elves close enough to hear her exchanged looks where they thought she wouldn’t see them.
I got the distinct feeling they’d been over this argument with her before, and maybe they’d been forced to go and try to rescue someone who was clearly already lost.
She’d said she wasn’t very good at this, after all. Sometimes sacrifices had to be made, though, and I was willing to make them. Even if it sucked.
As though to underline that point, something stabbed me in the back. I cried out in pain and whirled around to see what was attacking me, then realized I was feeling one of my elf units finally being overrun by orcs. More blows hit me, until they abruptly came to an end.
“Let’s go,” I said.
“Not yet,” Leila said, her eyes burning with that white fire again. “I’m going to prepare a surprise for them.”
“As long as it’s a surprise you can whip up fast that’s fine,” I said, zooming out to tactical view for a quick look at the situation. It wasn’t good. Those red dots were moving in fast and going around the elves who were still holding out.
She started working something up, and a white mist rose in the center of the clearing. A mist that started to swirl and move with a life of its own as she moved her hands and commanded it. The glow coming from it was so bright that I almost had to look away.
Also? That pulsing feeling was back deep inside me. So much that I almost started to feel tired from the exertion of feeling that power running through me. Weird. It was almost like…
A moment later I was staring at the magic again, but it didn’t seem as impossibly bright as before. I mean it was still impossibly bright, but it was impossibly bright and I could look at it without it destroying my eyes.
I also had arms under my shoulders. I looked over my shoulder to see Rachel standing there hitting me with a half smile.
“What the hell just happened?” I asked.
“If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say you just had your ass handed to you by Leila channeling a bit too much magic through you.”
“That can happen?” I asked.
“Well usually the crystal is a focus for the Dungeon Core,” she said. “But something weird is going on with you. Like it’s going through you, and not the crystal, and you don’t necessarily have the power, if that makes sense.”
I grinned. “I have the power, all right.”
“That’s not what I meant,” she said, pulling me back and away from the spinning maelstrom of magic Leila was working with her hands. It was amazing watching her working her hands and that staff to make the magic swirl and do her bidding.
“She’s really good at that,” I muttered, still kind of out of it from blacking out.
“She’d better be good at it,” Rachel muttered. “She’s been practicing for most of her life to learn how to do that.”
“Makes sense,” I said.
Leila was something to behold too. She was calling down the magic and her whole body was so bright that I probably wouldn’t have been able to look at her if the magic she was wielding didn’t come from yours truly.
Then again I could look at her doing something as simple as getting cereal from the top cabinet and I’d be obsessed. She had the kind of tight ass and perky tits that…
“Are you going to keep talking like that?” Rachel asked. “I mean I agree with you, but I don’t really need to hear you saying it.”
I blinked. I hadn’t realized I’d been saying that crap out loud. I blushed, but then figured fuck it. Why be all blushing about how hot I thought Leila was?
“Don’t worry,” I said. “You’re just as hot as she is, just in a different way.”
“Thanks so much,” she muttered.
She was dragging me someplace dark. At least it was darker than the forest, and that was saying something considering it wasn’t exactly all bright sunshine out there where Leila was still doing her thing.
“Where are we?” I asked.
An intense pulse of light coincided with a bit more of the old darkness closing in ar
ound me. Which probably should’ve terrified me, but I couldn’t bring myself to work up much of any emotion.
I was too distracted by that odd pulsing.
“You need to do whatever the fuck you’re doing soon!” Rachel shouted.
Leila waved her hands one final time and the pulsing magic shot down into the ground. I could still see it pulsing there, but there wasn’t any white mist coming off of me any longer. I also suddenly felt a hell of a lot better now that there wasn’t a stream of magic moving from me to Leila.
Though that’d felt good even as it was about to black me out. Like I could almost sense something beyond perception, but then it was gone.
I stood. Rachel tried to stop me, but I waved an irritated hand at her and she finally took a step back.
“Whatever,” she muttered.
“That’s right whatever,” I said.
I looked around. We were inside the massive tree. The door was still open, and Leila was sprinting towards us. There was something else moving into the clearing now as well.
I frowned, my eyes narrowing. Orcs. Enough of the bastards were moving into the clearing to really make for a bad day for us, even defending a chokepoint like the entrance into this tree.
I wondered if Leila had any sort of crowd control spells. If this were any of my favorite games then it would’ve been easy enough to hit any of the orc bastards with some sort of freezing spell that halted them in their tracks and allowed us to take them out at our leisure while the other ones were stuck bottlenecking at the entrance, but there was something about the way Leila was sprinting towards the tree that told me we weren’t going to have a chance to make creative use of crowd control spells.
“Get back!” she shouted.
“Can’t they see the glowing in the ground?” I asked, staring at the forest floor that was glowing almost as brightly as the canopy with sunlight streaming down through it.
“You can see that because it’s your magic,” Rachel said. “And you might want to get back. The magic might not hurt you, but the stuff the magic kicks up can.”
I took a step back as I got the picture of exactly what the hell it was Leila was doing with that magic. She’d created an arcane landmine big enough to take out those orcs. A landmine that might also be big enough to take us out if we didn’t get the fuck out of here soon.
“She’s crazy!” I breathed.
The door started to swing shut before Leila reached it, but she was holding her glowing staff out in front of her so I figured that was intentional.
“This is going to be close,” Rachel muttered.
“Come on!” I shouted. “Get your sexy ass in gear!”
Leila pumped her legs, her breath coming in gasps. I could feel the exertion flowing through the bond between us. Her lungs were burning like she’d enjoy nothing more than to take a pull from an inhaler. At least I know I always liked taking a pull from the old inhaler back when I was forced to run for gym class in elementary and middle school.
She dove through and did a little roll as the door closed behind her.
“Higher!” she shouted. “We need to be out of this tree when that blows!”
I could still see that pulsing magic coming through the door. Pulsing magic that looked like it was building in intensity.
“It’s not flowing through me anymore,” I said. “How the hell is it gaining power?”
“Because I know what the fuck I’m doing,” Leila said. “Now get your ass up in the tree if you know what’s good for you!”
I figured this was a good time to listen to the pretty elf who seemed to know what the hell was going on in this world, and so I turned and found myself facing a ramp that ran up the interior of the tree in a massive spiral.
“More running? Are you fucking kidding me?” I asked.
“Come on,” Rachel said. “Your crystal should make it a little easier.”
I sighed. “Tell me when we get up to twenty. I’m gonna throw up.”
Rachel beamed at me. “I love that movie! It was so much fun seeing it in the theaters this summer.”
I blinked. Well then. I guess that told me what year she was from. Though I was too busy concentrating on running up the spiral to think much about what year she came from back on earth.
Luckily the tree was massive enough that the ramp was wide enough for all of us. Which was a good thing, because I could feel that magical power building behind us, and I figured we were about to get hit with something pretty fucking powerful.
“I think it’s about to blow,” I growled.
“We need to make it,” Leila said. “I need to direct it. See if you can hold it back.”
I had no idea what she was talking about. Not to mention I was still concentrating mostly on making my way up this fucking ramp that was like something straight out of my worst nightmares from gym class.
“Concentrate on the power behind you and try to keep it from doing anything,” Rachel muttered. “At least that’s what I found worked best.”
I tried concentrating on the magic pulsing behind us. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I tried to imagine that it wasn’t about to blow up and take a bunch of orcs, and maybe part of the tree and us, along with it. Though from the sudden loud thumping drifting up from the bottom of the tree was anything to go on, they needed to be blown up sooner rather than later if we were going to make it out of this without them streaming into the tree and killing us.
Talking about walking a thin and deadly line.
“Here we are!” Leila said, turning to the side and bursting through something that looked like the side of the tree, but clearly it wasn’t solid wood considering she could walk right through the motherfucker.
“How did she do that?” I asked.
“Simple,” Rachel said. “Like this.”
“Sort of like going at the wall in King’s Cross?” I asked.
“Like what?” Rachel asked.
“Ahead of your time, but your kids will love it,” I said with a wave, realizing that was another reference she wasn’t going to pick up on since that movie had come out in 1985. “I guess it’s like trying to find the path to the castle and getting sent the wrong way by a puppet worm.”
They were all looking at me like I’d lost it now.
“Right. That was 1986. You haven’t met the power of Bowie’s bulge yet,” I said.
“Whatever,” she said. “Come on. I want to watch Leila work.”
I paused and looked at Eleric. He nodded to me, but didn’t make any move to step through the wall.
“We’ll stay here, if you don’t mind sir,” he said. “I’d really rather not have anything to do with what they’re doing out there.”
“You and me both,” I muttered, eyeing the wall they’d stepped through.
“We’ll be waiting here in case the orcs get through,” Eleric said. “They’ve never managed to make it to the high canopy.”
There was something about his tone that said if the orcs tried to push for the high canopy now then there was a good chance they would be able to seriously fuck shit up. He was hitting me with the look of a man who knew he didn’t have long for this world if whatever the mages were working up didn’t save his ass.
“We’ll fix this,” I said, having no idea what the hell I was going to do to fix this. I’d been winging it so far, after all, and right now winging it seemed to mostly involve letting Leila do her thing.
Basically I had no idea how I was going to take out an entire army with one mage, one former goddess, and a small ragtag band of elf soldiers, but I wasn’t letting him know that.
14
Pest Control
I stepped out onto a branch that looked like something straight out of Teldrassil. Like there was a secret area in the massive world tree near the starting area you could jump off of and do a little feather fall to reach some massive branches on the side of the tree.
Let’s just say there’d been a time, way back in middle school, when I’d been a littl
e too obsessive about playing World of Warcraft on roleplaying servers where I could work out some of my adolescent frustrations with a little bit of textual healing. The less said about that dark chapter in my life, or some of the things I saw in the depths of Moonguard as a young man who really shouldn’t have been exposed to that kind of stuff at that tender young age, the better.
I was hit with a touch of vertigo as I looked down through an impossibly tall canopy. Down in the distance were the orcs doing their best to get to us by slamming themselves into the tree over and over again.
“So is this twenty?” I asked.
“Is it what?” Leila asked, concentrating on the glow in the ground down below.
“He’s talking about something from our world,” Rachel said. “They label floors with numbers so people know how high up they are.”
“What an odd world you come from,” Leila muttered, though she was moving her hands and something was happening down in the clearing below so I figured she was probably a little too preoccupied with the whole magic thing to worry overly much about how building floors were labeled back in our world.
“Right, well this is going to have to do,” I said.
I hated leaning over the edge of the tree, but oddly enough the sense of vertigo that overtook me, coupled with the already queasy feeling I had from doing so much vertical cardio when my body hadn’t been warmed up for that kind of thing, turned out to be the perfect combination.
I let loose with an unholy amalgamation of everything I’d eaten yesterday mixed together with all the booze I’d enjoyed before being thrown into this strange new world. Rachel made a disgusted noise, but what the fuck ever.
“That’s disgusting,” she muttered.
“Sorry,” I said, wiping my mouth as I watched the puke sail through the air and land on an unsuspecting orc who looked up in surprise.
It was too far away for me to see the look of disgust on the asshole’s face, but I could only imagine how pissed the motherfucker was to suddenly find himself covered in the contents from my stomach.
Puny God Page 14