“The Widowmakers. I see where you are, Mr. Scvth. Remain there and don’t break the portal channel. The assessor will be here any moment now.”
“This castle is worth a hundred million,” Flaygray spoke up, narrowing his eyes as he looked at the goblin. “Don’t let him cheat you, boss.”
“The owner offered a hundred and fifty,” Nega added. “Giving away this luxury base for less than that would be criminal!”
“We will take that into consideration,” Grokuszuid answered dryly, peering at my guards with interest. “Most unusual friends you have, Mr. Scyth. Most unusual! Now I must ask you to take three steps back. The assessor is here. She will now enter the portal.”
She? So she was. A slouching goblin woman emerged from the portal, short even for her species. She looked around, walked over to me, jabbed a finger at my chest. Two sentients appeared behind her, a minotaur and lopher. Guards, it seemed. They stood up and placed demonstrative hands on their weapons, a halberd and a giant hammer.
I examined the assessor’s profile.
Kusalarix, goblin, level 35Q Merchant Assessor
Green League.
The Green League held the Arena battles and took bets from all over Dis. Everyone knew that, but few knew that the league also controlled all the dive bars, brothels and gambling houses in all three capitals. It was more of a mafia than a guild; they ran protection rackets too. Grokuszuid sure had some friends in low places. Some assessor! A cigarette hung from her mouth.
“Yo wazzup, nice joint,” Kusalarix rasped, emitting acrid gray smoke. “The Green League is in the buildin’. Gimme the low-down.”
“I don’t understand a word you’re saying, lady,” Flaygrav frowned.
“We’re selling a captured castle,” I answered.
“Damn straight you’re selling the castle and not this horny idiot from the Inferno,” the goblin declared, pointing at the satyr. “Slave trading has been forbidden by the Darant Convention since the Swarm Wars, in case ya slept through history.”
“Does that count for souls, as well?” Nega inquired. The goblin woman gave her a scathing look and didn’t answer.
“Let’s talk business!” Kusalarix spread her arms. “The Green League will take the castle and all its contents. I wouldn’t give you more than ten, but old man Grokuszuid asked me to give you an honest price, so you’ll get folly million…”
“WHAT?!” the succubus and satyr shrieked.
I was a little surprised myself. Just the contents of the clan vault might have been worth more than that.
“Hey, slow down, I wasn’t done. Forty for the castle, and the same again for the vault contents. That’s the ‘honest price’ part—you never know, the vault could be empty. Whaddaya say, dead man? We have a deal?”
Kusalarix the goblin from the Green League offered me a hand. Without looking at my guardian friends’ faces, I shook it:
“Deal!”
Chapter 15: Call of the Nucleus
GROKUSZUID THE AUCTIONEER appeared personally to examine the castle vault. And not alone, but with the already familiar Gruzelix from the transport guild, who brought a hundred mighty and somewhat dim haulers—members of physically strong species such as titans, giants, ogres, minotaurs and lophers.
The Green League’s lively and nimble goblins were already rushing around, each with the signature cigarette hanging from their lips, in wide pants and suspenders, sleeves rolled up and bowler hats on their heads. Kusalarix, Grokuszuid and Gruzelix belonged to different organizations, but they worked together, doing their part for the good of the Goblin League.
The auctioneer and the hauler declared that the High Council would guarantee to furnish me with all the resources necessary for ‘comfortably waging war/ as they put it. In particular, this included the free services of the transport guild for me and all my allies, and fast reviews of requests to sell trophies and ’other castles, if you capture them.’ Kusalarix chuckled at that last part, but said nothing.
With the formalities complete, Grokus and Gruzelix set off to audit the Widowmakers’ clan vault. The assessor stayed back in the headquarters and asked to speak with me privately. Her tone brooked no refusal, but I didn’t plan to refuse anyway.
“So, the Sleeping Gods…” The goblin woman lit up a cigarette, took a drag, drummed her nails on the table. “What, did they turn ya into a dead fella? Somehow I don’t remember them kinda shenanigans in our legends. Don’t get the wrong idea, kid. The League ain’t makin’ claims, it’s showin’ interest. I gotta know how things stand, ’cos this whole mess is kinda murky.”
Without going into detail, I explained how the Sleeping Gods and the Destroying Plague stood in opposition, and how I’d somehow managed to become the Initial of one and the Supreme Legate of the other.
“Playin’ both sides, I get it…” Kusalarix chuckled. “The League wonders, what do the Sleepers want? The world is divided, the New Gods drove the Old beneath the Barrier. Who do your boys stand for? Who are we going to be dealing with? And which side will you be on in the end?”
Which side…? Good question. How could I answer it if I planned to delete my character? Possibly even today. I just had to make sure that the deal with Kiran was still in effect, then explain it all to Behemoth. I hoped I’d remain his Initial when I made a new character, but if not, I’d tty to convince the Sleeping God to transfer my status to one of the boys. I also wanted to make the First Kill on the Montosaums before I lost Iimnortcility and Reflection, which I’d need to use if I wanted to take out the ancient reptile.
And was it worth sharing my secrets with a barely familiar goblin woman here on behalf of a criminal organization?
“To tell you the truth, Mrs. Kusalarix, I don’t know. My plans change constantly, and not always by my own will.”
“I see. The gods pull you this way and that way, probably can’t even take a shit without their say-so. Which is why we bow,” the goblin woman made air quotes with her fingers, “to the greedy and heartless Maglubiyet and all-knowing Bargrivyek. They don’t give a rat’s ass about us, they don’t stick their noses in our business, and we…” She cut off, didn’t finish her sentence. “About your gods… What do you think, personally?”
“The Sleeping Gods are better. They don’t demand mindless deference and they reward all their followers…”
Kusalarix’s eyes burned when she heard of Unity, which gave the followers of the Sleeping Gods stat points. Swearing colorfully, the goblin woman brought a fist down on the table, then lit another cigarette. A few moments of furious thought, then she quickly said goodbye and disappeared into a portal without a backward glance. She threw a coin over her shoulder as she went. The same type as the one Grokuszuid gave me, I realized, throwing the communication artifact into my inventory.
I said goodbye to the goblins and teleported to Tiamat’s temple. I summoned my undead minions from there. Leaving them with Bomber to defend the temple, I jumped to Kharinza and logged out of Dis. I had a conversation with Kiran ahead of me. A lot depended on what he said to me.
Apart from Hung and me, only my bodyguards Maria Saar and Roj van Garderen remained at the house. Hairo, Sergei and Yoshi had all flowm away to Cali Bottom to give the noncitizens a mental block to revealing the clan’s secrets, and also to keep an eye on the base’s construction. On top of that, Maria said that Willy had ordered capsules for Malik and Ed through his channels, and if Yoshi had time to fly in and set them up, then the boys could be playing by tomorrow.
The Japanese man left me an encrypted device to contact Kiran. But before I called the Snowstorm director, Roj’s comm squawked. As he answered the call, he looked at me and his face got darker every second. What was going on, damn it? Just as I was about to ask the question, Roj brought up a holoprojection.
“Hairo wants to talk, Alex.”
Already prepared for bad news, I came closer so the security officer could see me. He was about to say that the base wasn’t going to work out, or something worse. As
long as my friends and parents were alright! Hairo got straight to the point.
“We have trouble, Alex. Two of Gyula’s work gang died in the night. Three more are badly sick. They need to go to the hospital, but…”
“The clan will pay all their expenses.”
I had to push the words out past a sandpaper tongue and a desert-dry throat. The puzzle finally came together. The noncitizens started to get sick when they turned undead, and I told them not to log into Dis. Gyula brought them in to work on restoring Tiamat’s temple, and now the consequences hit. Only a fool would fail to see the course of events. An icy cold ran down my spine. This was no simple trouble. One could say I had become witness to a mass murder, if not a genocide.
“Hairo… Tell all the ones that turned undead… They can’t go into Dis. It’ll kill them!”
“Got it. I’ll pass it on. I’m going to take the sick men to a clinic that accepts noncitizens. But I have to warn you, their bills are big.”
“Not a problem. How’s Gyula himself?”
“He’s fine. The other three… We have to hurry. Over and out.”
Hairo’s face disappeared. I slowly slid down the wall onto the floor; my legs gave out. Two deaths! Two humans. Someone’s sons, husbands, fathers. Dead because of Dis. It may be an important game, but it was still just a game! And if it was because they turned undead… I’d turned them practically with my own hands. Worse, I’d enabled the global infection of hundreds, if not thousands of players! Who would themselves go on to infect others… And there would surely be noncitizens among them. It began to seem more and more obvious that their capsules differed from ordinary ones in far more than just the limit on levels.
“Are you alright, Alex?” Roj extended a hand and helped me get up.
“No, Roj. I’m not alright…”
I gathered my thoughts, then called Kiran, but got no answer, just: Recipient has blocked you. The comm left by Yoshi went straight to the answering machine.
“He’s busy,” Roj said, nodding at the comm.
“Apparently so.”
“You know, when I was in the army, one day I got two bad pieces of news…”
“Oh, God, Roj, don’t start!” Maria said from her position by the door with the activity scanner.
“What news?” I asked mechanically, still deep in thought.
“My mother died in a terrorist attack and my fiancee broke up with me, said she was in love with someone else. A friend of mine, as it happens, but that’s irrelevant. The point is that in a single day, I’d lost a mother, a bride and a friend. And I was as aggrieved then as you are now. Our sergeant must have gotten some bad news that day too. He sent us out on a fully loaded march. I don’t remember when it happened; when I fell from tiredness, when I couldn’t see for the bloody circles in my eyes, but my grief… No, it didn’t go away. But it faded. It stopped strangling me and tearing my heart, let me go on living.”
“What are you getting at, Roj?”
“That asshole from Snowstorm ain’t gonna answer, but without talking to him, you’re gonna be off-balance. The weather’s nice. I say we go for a run.”
“No, thanks. Yesterday was enough for me. I can’t even walk right now…”
After decisively declining Roj’s offer, nonetheless, ten minutes later I was running side by side with him and Maria on the now familiar route. Both bodyguards were silent. I couldn’t even hear them breathing. But Roj was right. It cleared my head, and after a quarter of an hour I couldn’t think of anything but the run itself. My body thought it was dying and hooked up the extra reserves, sending hormones into my blood. Hidden by a thick canopy of fir and pine, we followed the edge of a lake to an impassable thicket where I was allowed to take a breather and drink from Roj’s flask. Then we ran back.
Just as we got home, Kiran called himself.
“I thought it was you, Alex. Well, congratulations, you’re a global star!” he said without smiling when he saw me. He looked annoyed. “What do you want?”
“Mr. Jackson, I’ve held up my end of the bargain. I’m willing to delete my character, but first I want to ask…”
“No.”
“No?”
“No, you haven’t held up your end of the bargain. You did not complete the Nucleus’s quests. Worse, you failed them. There will be no deal.”
Blood rushed to my face, but I mentally counted to ten I could speak as calmly as possible.
“Then I have no other choice but to develop my potential to the maximum, Mr. Jackson.”
“Are you threatening me?” He rolled his eyes. “Listen here, Sheppard. All of Snowstorm is having to deal with the consequences of your foolish actions. The introduction of the new faction did not go according to the script, and all because you couldn’t complete a simple quest! You found the cultists of Morena, didn’t you? You did! So tell me, in the name of all that is holy, what stopped you from turning them undead?” I couldn’t tell if he was faking anger or if he really was furious, but it looked scary either way. He was shouting, his eyes wide, spittle flying. “And now that the lich is dead, you’re the sole legate of a faction whose number is limited to the number of the fucking legates themselves!”
“I can fix it all!”
Kiran thought a moment, shook his head, answered calmly:
“You can’t do anything. The Nucleus’s AI has begun its game. The only thing you’re capable of doing is removing your minions from the desert and destroying the temple on Kharinza. Once you do that, call.
Perhaps, I repeat, perhaps, we will return to the conversation we had in Dubai. Until then, don’t you dare disturb me! Were having enough trouble without you.”
Kiran cut the call.
“Dickhead,” Maria swore. “You aren’t going to do it, are you?”
“To make everything stop, sure I will. Or I would, if I had a guarantee. But he didn’t have me any guarantees, and I don’t trust him.”
The day had begun so well, and now it was deep in the shittiest shitter I could think of. That dumb dream, the deaths of the noncitizens, now this. As far as Snowstorm was concerned, I could go to the Nether. They’d given me an ultimatum with no guarantees. Now it was me against all of them. While the money—mine and the clan’s—was in Dis, it was just virtual digits. Kiran Jackson would find some excuse to freeze or take away what we’d amassed. We might manage to get a little out, like we did with dad, but all of it? Unlikely.
Anyway, if I deleted Scyth, then how many people would I be letting down? How many sentients in Dis, not counting the gods? Hundreds of noncitizens, Yoruba, the troggs and kobolds—those were for definite.
Just one name in the list would have been enough to make my decision.
“Lunch!” Maria called.
“Give me five minutes,” I answered, tearing away from the table to my capsule.
As soon as I appeared in Dis, I jumped through the depths to the Widowmakers’ former castle. I soared up high, cast an eye over the charred buildings, the ruins of NergaTs temple, black from the ash in the air, the NPC corpses still lying on the ground… And the flag of the Green League fluttering atop the tallest tower of the castle, property of the preventers until only a couple of hours ago.
After configuring the recording mode so the viewers could see not only me, shrouded in Cloak Essence, but also the ruins behind me, I spoke calmly and somewhat tiredly: “We never planned to fight anyone. Never! But at the same time, we can’t allow people to think they can attack us unpunished. Nobody can doubt our strength and decisiveness. Yesterday, the Widowmakers treacherously violated the rules of the Goblin League’s Auction for Special Sales, and kidnapped me. See for yourselves what remains of their former castle. Former, because now it belongs to the Green League. And if they had refused to buy it, then it would have been destroyed. So it will be with any clan seen at the temple of the Sleeping Gods in the Lakharian Desert. Anyone who comes to us with sword in hand will die by the sword and lose all their castles. This isn’t a threat. It’s a
warning.”
* * *
Before sitting down to lunch, I sent my recording to Ian Mitchell, asking him to show it to as many people as he could. He answered briefly: “Will do,” and five minutes later my movie, starring me, was showing on all the channels.
They also showed journalists dogging Eileen. She refused to comment. One of the reporters questioning the preventers learned that they were heading for the temple, but a lack of unity slowed them down, along with Crash and the guardians.
“Each monster guarding the temple of the Sleeping Gods is like an extreme-difficulty raid boss. You don’t get them the first time,” Colonel, the leader of Excommunicado, said. “The Alliance is gathering its forces and will soon strike so hard that not a foundation stone will remain of that damn temple!”
To a question about my warning, Colonel answered that the Threat’s threats (he even chuckled while saying that) didn’t bother him, that the Widowmakers had paid for their carelessness and overconfidence and would be struck from the Alliance.
I’d seen enough. I had no appetite, although the smell of the lunch Maria made—something Middle Eastern—made my mouth water. I still mechanically shoveled it into my mouth and got ready for the next marathon play session.
Done watching the news and with my plate empty,1 thanked Maria, went back to my room and logged into Dis. Roj followed me and took his post by the capsule.
My heart filled with coldblooded calm. Uncle Nick called that mood “Do what you have to do, and what will be will be.” I knew what I had to do—squeeze as much as I could out of Immortality and the Destroying Plague, then tell the Nucleus and his (or Snowstorm’s) to go to the Nether with their rotten and stinking plots.
The usually lively fort just about housed all the newcomers, except the troggs, who found refuge in the caves by the mines. The fort was unusually quiet wiien I got there, and its sole street was deserted.
When Bomber saw I was online, he wTote that the guardians had repelled two attacks today. The second had just ended, and was a full-fledged second-tier preventer raid from outside the Alliance. Sharkon nearly died. Nega saved him when she took control of their top damager and sowed some chaos in the attackers’ ranks.
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