She also sported a glowing, enchanted ring on each of her elegant fingers, including her thumbs. I caught sight of a glowing necklace that she quickly tucked into her black, skin-tight shirt. So that was 11 accessories I could see. That meant she was at least level 110. If Smallthunder was any indication, she was probably much higher.
The rotting remnants of Archie spread on the ground around her. On the minimap, her dot had turned from white to blue. She was no longer arrowed, despite being a player in a warzone.
“It’s a spell,” she said. “It’s called Fleshmonger. It allows me to wear the body of the recently deceased. With my mastery ability in the spell, it also gives me the ability to mimic the skills of the deceased and even see some of their memories. It’s an extremely useful spell.”
“I’ve heard of that spell,” I said, remembering hearing about it from Gretchen. Isabella wasn’t a sapper. She was a harbinger. “I thought you could only wear the dead bodies on you for a few minutes?”
She nodded. “It’s a few minutes per player level, but as you increase your skill in the spell, it goes up. I’m a level 43 master in Fleshmonger. I can wear the dead bodies for 10 minutes per player level.”
“And what’s your level?” I asked, afraid of the answer.
“892,” she said.
Holy shit. I wasn’t Gretchen, so I couldn’t do the math in my head, but it had been just over six days since we’d met Archie. I suspected the time was just about up, which was why Archie’s skin was starting to fall off.
“You dumbasses had allowed all your sappers to be killed,” she continued. “I sneaked into the guild right after it opened and found the body. This guy here died protecting his wife and little ones. They hadn’t really gotten away, unfortunately.”
“Okay,” I said. “How are you not arrowed then?”
She stuck up her middle finger of her left hand, revealing a ring with a shining green stone. “It’s this one. It’s called a Ring of Royal Deferment. You’d almost tripped me up, actually, when you attempted to arrow me that night. Also, when Miss Xena insisted I go into your party, it really threw me for a loop. She’s a clever one, that Gretchen. I had to leave my real party to join yours.”
She’s not in contact with her friends in Rafingo, I thought. I remembered what Yi had said about Smallthunder. He’d found their secret hideout, and he’d gone hunting. I once again checked the players online, and the number was still at 13. If he had captured or hunted down any of Isabella’s crew, they weren’t dead.
“Okay, then. So, why are you here?” I finally asked.
“You know that book of yours really pissed off my crew,” she said. “You don’t even realize what you’ve done. You mentioned something in there that gives away the location of where we’ve been hiding. We’ve been preparing to move anyway, but we’ve had to accelerate those efforts. Anyway, when we saw the notification of the world event, we were curious, so I came out to investigate. And then I stumbled upon your book and realized it was you. This celebrated, amazing King Jonah was actually Charlie. My Charlie. I knew I had to help. I was hoping I could do it without you finding out. But you were always clever, Charlie. It’s part of what I liked about you.”
“You tricked me,” I said. “You made me think I was special.”
She put her hand on my cheek. “You were special. You are special, Charlie. Yes, there were others. But what we had was different. I hope someday you’ll believe that.”
“Someday?” I asked. “Do you know what’s going on out there? We’re going to die, probably in a few minutes. We don’t have regen spots. Isabella, I was tortured. I’m going to be tortured again.”
She sighed. “Daniels, I know. I’m really sorry about that. I should have put a bullet in him instead of Conestoga.” She shook her head. “It would’ve save a lot of trouble, actually.”
“Why? Why did you do it?”
She didn’t answer for several moments. “It’s a long story,” she said. “I want you to know the truth, but we don’t have time.”
“How about the quick version, then.”
She looked toward the doorway. I turned to see both Spritz and Nale standing there, wide-eyed at the new arrival sitting amongst the gore that used to be Archie.
“The whole reason the world had gone to shit was because nobody would work together. When the United States abandoned NATO, that was the start of the end, leaving everyone to fend for themselves. And then the Americans announce they have found a new home, but only they, Canada, and Japan can know where it is? How was that fair? Long ago, the Americans came onto the world stage, presenting themselves as these great protectors of the world. And look what happened. So yes, a contingent of us worked together to make certain this migration was diverse. Fuck them.”
“So you killed the crew?” I asked, incredulous. “The Hibiscus is crashing. We’re all going to die unless Waldo’s plan works out. How is that helping anyone? There’s 50,000 of us on the ship, Isabella.”
“We didn’t have a choice,” Isabella said. “We received a message. We had a system of hiding messages in the bursts. Earth went to shit right after we left. It was even worse than we thought. China invaded Japan and Korea. India and Pakistan continued to lob nukes at each other. A new earthquake and tsunami devastated central America, New Zealand, and Australia. Disease, war, and death, Charlie. The United States suffered another coup attempt, and this one stuck. All our careful planning went to hell.”
She wiped her eyes. “From what we gathered, the Catholic church came forward and announced they’d built a huge fleet of ships, and they were ready to go. They could take several million people, not just Catholics. Then the Muslims came forward with a similar offer. And then the Mormons. Though they only took in fellow Mormons. A whole fleet. The Americans refused to give up the location. But it didn’t matter. We knew. NATO was working with the Rus Feds. They’d pretended their shipyard had been hit with a rock, but in reality they’d built a whole fleet of their own. We’d installed a subroutine that sent back our destination once it had been programmed in. Gemma caught the routine, but it was too late. NATO got the coordinates, joined up with the churches, filled the ships, and left for Arcadia. They’re going to be here any day. Millions of settlers, Charlie. Millions.”
My head swam. It didn’t make sense. “But why did they order The Hibiscus crashed? Why did they order the surface irradiated?”
“Thanks to Gemma’s warning, the new American leadership knew The Hibiscus was infiltrated. For all their efforts to keep everything secret from the outside world, they’d allowed themselves to be compromised from the inside out. They’d tasked us with finding 50,000 colonists, train them, and to keep it a secret, all in a period of five months. Do you know how difficult that is? My contingent had taken over the entirety of the medical group. We were tasked with the psych exams of the potential colonists. We’d been deliberately tanking the most qualified candidates on psych grounds. Eventually the navy just put us in charge of recruitment. That was our opening. Everything was moving so quickly, they never even checked our work. If we said someone was qualified, they just assumed they were.”
“Yeah,” I said, suddenly bitter. I’d figured out already it was something like this. “You filled The Hibiscus with whatever the opposite of a ringer is. People you thought would do a shitty job. You picked me deliberately because you thought I was a loser, thinking I’d fuck up my task.”
She lowered her head, and she didn’t even try to deny it. “The plan was to have a second, hidden fleet show up right after The Hibiscus, but before the main colony fleet in five years. If we arrived and found you floundering on the planet, you’d have no choice but to accept us. We hadn’t anticipated for everything to hit the fan so quickly. Or for the new American government to be so damn petty. You know what they say, that no battle plan survives contact with the enemy. When we learned that the crew was to be ordered to crash the ship, we had to act. We had to kill The Hibiscus’s crew.”
“It
seems to me you should’ve taken out the AI Gemma and not focused so much on being murdering assholes,” I said. “Do you really think the crew would just kill themselves?”
She nodded. “It seems to me you’re right. It happened so fast, Charlie. We printed out the message, read it, and by the time we’d even processed what it said, Gemma had already melted Alice and locked herself in the server room. We had no idea the AI had that much power. The Hibiscus is filled to the brim with hidden security measures, things we didn’t even know about. You can thank good old-fashioned American paranoia for that. There are fucking robots roaming the hallways, trying to break into the life support systems. These were supposed to be construction bots for the habs, and they’re armed to the teeth. Waldo is fighting a losing battle.”
“Jesus,” I said.
She nodded. “So the Americans, realizing what was happening did what bitter assholes do. They ordered The Hibiscus crashed, and they ordered the surface ruined for the new fleet.”
“But that just ruins it for everyone.”
“It ruins it for the NATO fleet,” Isabella said. “All the Americans have to do is slow down their next fleet a couple percentage points, and instead of arriving 5 years later, they arrive 5,000 years later, and the ambient surface radiation is back to safe levels.”
“I still have so many questions,” I said, my mind reeling. We didn’t have time for this. I stood, looking at the map. Akkorokamui was getting terrifyingly close to the end of the spiral run.
“So,” I said. “If you’re really level 892, then I imagine you can probably help us out with our demon problem.”
Isabella sighed, standing up. She wiped some errant texugo hair off her legs. “I’m afraid not, Charlie. You guys are on your own.”
“What? Why? Isn’t that why you’re here?”
“First off, there’s no stopping that thing. You’re screwed. I came here to see what you guys were really about, to see if you’d be a good fit for our team. It’s not going to happen. I like you, Charlie. For a while there I thought I was a little bit in love with you. But we’ve had some time to think about what’s going on, and we’ve all decided it’s best to just let the ship die. We’re not going to actively be assholes about it like Daniels was, but if we save the ship, there’s still a chance Gemma will manage to do some real damage. There are millions of people on the way here, Charlie. It’s best, safest for everyone involved if we make the sacrifice and just let it happen.”
“It’s 50,000 people,” I said. “People you helped choose.”
“Did you know that over half of these people are from the United States prison system? Most of them are violent offenders. The scientists and engineers are all mediocre at best. Somewhere in there is an honest-to-goodness serial killer. The police had tried to stop one of our launches to the shipyard because they’d traced the killer to our facilities. Can you imagine that? We didn’t come into this intending on letting The Hibiscus fail, but there it is. We can still lead full lives. In here, we’ll live much longer than people out in the real world.”
“Then why won’t you help us?” I asked.
“Take it as a compliment,” she said. “You guys are good at this. I enjoyed working with you. This has been the most fun I’ve had in years. But you’re a little too good. If we let you just roam free, there’s a chance you might pull this rescue-the-ship operation off. Not a good chance, but what happens if you correct the orbit, but you still can’t stop Gemma? If the ship falls out of orbit in the next few hours, Gemma won’t have time to fully take over and irradiate the surface. But what happens if the ship is stabilized? We can’t take that risk.”
“So you’re just going to let us die?”
Isabella shrugged. “Sorry. Besides, Smallthunder is right about one thing. I mean, it was rich coming from someone like him, but you guys are fucking with the NPC ecosystem. The more self-aware they get, the more dangerous it is for us. It’s best you just leave well enough alone.”
“You’re a monster,” I said. “Just like Daniels.”
“Daniels was a monster. He was a sadistic prick. I’m just trying to help save the world.”
I had the urge to punch her in the face. I knew that was probably a bad idea.
“We’re going to get out of this,” I said. “And when we do, I’m going to hunt you down, and I am going to make you suffer.”
She smiled sadly. “I really wish that was true, Charlie. But I can’t imagine how you will. Either way, I’ll stick around to watch it go down. Don’t bother trying to attack me. It won’t go so well for you.” She held up her hand. “And here’s a promise. I swear I won’t get in your way, no matter what happens. At least not today. I figure I owe you at least that much.”
I looked at the map. Akkorokamui would soon be on the Menagerie. I focused on the lone Muzzle tower sitting there. My eyes caught something sitting on the table. It was one of the extra abbot fruits Raj had found. Popper must have placed it there as a tribute to the little guy.
“Did you ever meet Raj?” I asked. I picked up the fruit, tossing it in the air, thinking.
“No,” she said.
“We had this quest not too long ago,” I said. “And it required us to find one of these things for a salve. So we went looking everywhere for this fruit. We asked the clerics, the druids, and the mages. We tried to ask the alchemists, but they’d already fled. Anyway, we couldn’t find the damn thing. We thought we’d have to zap our way halfway across the world to get it from the vine. But little, innocent Raj, he found some for us in five minutes flat. You know why? Because that’s the way his brain works. It was a fruit, so he went to the fruit market. It was the most obvious thing in the world. But we missed it because we were so blinded by the potential complexity of the quest. It was something grand, mysterious, and we missed the obvious.”
“What’re you trying to say, Charlie?” Isabella asked.
“That thing out there,” I said. “She’s an octopus, right? A sea creature.”
“So?”
I turned and started to jog out of the room. I opened up chat, telling Gretchen and Popper to meet me at the Menagerie.
Jonah Note 31
Gretchen and I stood atop the Muzzle tower. Popper and Alice stood below, off the path.
“That spell is only five mystic points,” Gretchen said. “How is it going to work?”
I had my fly pole out. I cast Create Hook, and I made the largest, nastiest-looking hook I could.
“It’ll work,” I said. I reread the description of Gretchen’s spell for the 100th time.
“But how do you know?”
“Because it’s the simplest answer. It’s the Raj answer.”
“I don’t even know what that means,” Gretchen said.
Poppy: Here she comes.
The octopus rounded the corner, huge, bigger than life. From this angle, I could see the top of her head. Words floated there as if she was any other sea creature:
Akkorokamui, Cephalopod Form. Rarity: Unique. Value: ##null fishmonger. ##null chemist. Weight: 146,047.711 kgs. Length: 24.99 meters. This cephalopod is safe to eat.
She moved terribly slow. Her entire bulk was covered with arrows. I worried I’d have difficulty finding purchase on the skin.
His Royal Majesty Jonah: Crystal. Quick, pick out an arrow that’ll blow all these shafts off the body. I just need an area on the head to sink my hook.
Crystal: Got it. That’s an easy one.
Starr: Aiming now. Waiting for the arrow.
Crystal: A simple boom arrow will do it. These things only take 10 seconds.
Kitty Chapman: Firing now.
The arrow streaked across the night sky, blasting against the demon’s head, leaving a wide swath of free skin.
Below, the Muzzle tower fired. The blue plasma splashed against the demon’s face before she could cast a spell to blow us to hell. She approached, tentacles swaying.
“Okay,” I said, get ready. “I gotta hook her first before you cast.”
“This is crazy, you know that, right?” she said.
I grinned, back cast, and whipped my pole, casting the weighted line out toward the giant octopus. I watched the hook land right on the beast’s head, catching firm.
“Now!” I cried.
Gretchen cast Instant Fish Fry, her five mystic point spell.
The description for the spell was simple:
“Allows for the cooking of seafood without the benefit of a cookfire. Target must be either in bucket or on hook for the spell to work.”
A terrible, back alley dumpster behind the crab restaurant stench filled the air as the bulk of one of the most powerful demons in the game collapsed onto the ground. Steam rose from her corpse.
Nobody moved. Below, I watched Alice shuffle onto the path, reach over, and take a bite out of a tentacle. She chewed for a minute then looked up at us. “It’s kinda gross!” she called. She took another bite.
Poppy: Holy fucking shit, Jonah and Gretchen. As long as I live in this damn game, I will never again see anything…
A wall of text drowned him out.
Wave 5 of 5 complete.
You have received a reward! 100,000 jacks have been added to your account. You have received ten training tokens!
You may pick any item from your class’s hall of honor. Visit your class guild hall for details.
Congratulations! You have successfully defended the city.
You have been honorably discharged from your service.
Thank you for your service.
System Message> Attention! Players far and wide! Attention! This is an important message from the Dominion Crown!
The Siege of Castellane. The Liege of Orochi has fallen. The city of Castellane is safe once again. The magic that once made the city inaccessible to the world is failing, and the grand metropolis will soon welcome all who wish to visit.
The Hobgoblin Riot: Dominion of Blades Book 2: A LitRPG Adventure Page 52