by Harry Nix
“We need to be super fast,” I said.
“Like a teenager on his first time,” Delicia said and saluted me. She wasn’t looking so healthy as the poison crept through her, but her spirit was unbreakable.
I used my staff to break the seal. It took a few good hard slams. The tops weren’t as fragile as I’d assumed. Finally, it broke, and a strand of red leaked down to begin mixing with the green.
In her haste to lift me, Delicia bashed my head against the vent I went up so fast.
“Sorry,” she said from below as I shook away stars and then pulled myself in. It felt slow, far too slow, and every moment was near panic. My clothes catching on the vent, the staff in the way. Delicia flew and hefted me in once I had enough of my body through. I turned around and helped her in.
“I know the way,” she said.
Off we went, crawling on hands and knees. We passed one vent and heard shouts to evacuate. The tunnels twisted and turned, and I was sure we were lost until we burst out into our original junction to find Isabel standing there, wide-eyed.
“Tell me you didn’t set any Death to explode,” she said, gripping my arms.
“We did. Need to get out of here because we have about a minute before it goes.”
Isabel pulled at her hair and fell to her knees before letting out a piercing scream of pure anguish.
“Rax has been loading Death under Bron. They weren’t taking it all out but setting it up in the mines. They stretch everywhere! He’s going to use it to incinerate the entire city all at once!”
“We still need to run,” I said, pointing at the vent. I offered my hand to Isabel, who took it.
I had a taste in my mouth, like blood and ash. The plan to destroy Rax’s mine and palace was now going to kill us all—and maybe Bron too.
Delicia went out first, then Isabel and I followed, the two girls helping pull me out. The dead guards were where we left them.
“I’m Delicia,” she said to Isabel and then grabbed her, launching straight up to the top of the wall with her. Then she dropped down to me and did the same.
We were spotted, some guards far down the wall who shouted in alarm but it didn’t matter. There was an enormous boom from underground, and then a column of blue fire burst up from the vent we’d just come from. The heat was searing, and all of us dived away from it. It flashed away before it could cook us, but then there was another explosion, and this time, multiple flames flared up across the palace, coming from the vents hidden in dead-end open corridors.
That was the safety system for brewing such a deadly binary explosive. A venting so the whole place wouldn’t go up.
“I know where Scarlet is,” Isabel said, once we were on our feet again. “I saw them take her, it’s not far.”
I hesitated. Delicia could take Isabel right now, leap off the cliff and fly away. If I died, it didn’t matter, I could just resurrect.
“We’re not doing that! We’re saving her!” Delicia said forcefully. She couldn’t read my mind, but she could read my face.
“Where’s Armando?” I asked.
“She’s camped out over near the prison. I figured you’d want to stage a breakout,” Isabel said.
“Hey!” came a shout, not too far away. Two guards, the ones who’d spotted us, had their shit together enough to investigate even as rumbles shook the palace, and blue flames burst out.
“Lead the way!” I shouted, casting Bolt at the pair of them. One had the lightning resistant armor, but the other didn’t. He went down while his friend rushed us. All I saw was a blonde blur as Delicia hasted by him and then kicked him in the back. He went down, which was enough for Isabel to stab him in the neck, get clear, and then I bolted him to death, a charge in the back of the neck.
We left the other one alive and shocked. There were flames venting, and the whole palace was rumbling. There was no time for fighting.
Following Isabel, we ran down the wall. The guards below were like crazed ants again. The mercenaries were fleeing, saving their skins and plenty of guards were joining them. There were dead everywhere. Some of the smaller buildings were on fire, and one outdoor corridor had caved in entirely, the ground giving way.
We came across one guard climbing a ladder to the wall. I booted him in the face without stopping and didn’t wait to see him land.
“Down there,” Isabel said as she slid to a stop.
Down there was chaos. Fire everywhere. Cracks opening in the marble. There was a tower that was adjoined to the palace. A long crack was already making its way up the side, and standing at the front door was Gunther/Lel.
“Oh no, no, Euphoria no,” Delicia said from behind us. I turned around to see her looking out at Bron, far below.
There was a blue flame searing up through a building. It must have been a hundred feet tall.
Everything shook, making it feel like the world was ending, but it wasn’t just yet. I still ended up on the ground, and by the time I got to my feet, the wall in bad shape. Parts of it were entirely missing, toppling off the cliff, and it wouldn’t be long before we went too.
But the Orc. There was no way we could fight him. I could transform and maybe kill him, but I had to remember the real target here: Rax.
“Maybe Armando could help,” Isabel suggested doubtfully.
“No, I’m going to go the third way,” I said, making a split-second decision.
I climbed on to the nearest ladder and then slid down it, losing some skin in the process. At the bottom, I stumbled but soon found my feet. Delicia floated down beside me.
“I could have just carried you,” she said, lifting my hand to look at my missing skin.
“Wouldn’t have looked so cool, though,” I replied.
One corner and there was Gunther. I could tell from the look on his face it was him. He hefted his club at the sight of us.
“I cannot let you through. Henry’s orders,” he said.
There was rumbling all around us and fire and screaming, and he was standing still like he was a butler at a dinner party.
“Lel, we just want Scarlet and Ori. I know you’re not bad,” I yelled.
The facial battle broke out immediately, and then Lel was in front of us.
“Gunther not bad. Rax have our families,” he grunted. He took two steps before he staggered in place.
“He’ll kill them!” Gunther yelled.
They still weren’t clear of the door enough for us to get by without risking being hit.
“Sorry,” Lel said after a struggle and then smashed himself in the face with the club. It was a massive hit, lifting him off his feet before crashing him to the ground.
“Crazy,” Isabel said from behind us.
“Super crazy,” Armando said. I turned around to see the giant spider had joined us. She was still injured but looking much better. I had to remind myself I’d been dead for a day.
I looked down at the Orc and then the fires around us. I couldn’t leave them.
“Armando, can you carry him? Do your spring web thing and get him out of here?”
“I can, but why would I? Isn’t he with the bad guy?”
“Only because Orcs are being held hostage.”
Armando grumbled for a moment before agreeing. She grabbed Gunther/Lel and began wrapping his body like he was lunch. It was creepy as hell, so I left her to it and went into the tower.
It was like a lighthouse on the inside, a metal staircase spiraling upwards. There were no other guards. We raced up a floor and ended in front of a heavily barred door.
“One last trick. I’ll see you all back on the ground,” Isabel said and pulled a firecracker from her cloak. She stuffed it in the keyhole, told us to go up a level, and then lit it before dashing away downstairs.
The firecracker blew the door to pieces. The entire staircase rang like a bell, and when the smoke cleared, I saw it had been torn away from the wall by the door.
“I’ll help,” Delicia said, wrapping her arms around me. She flew us across
the gap and through the broken door.
We landed, and over the acrid scent of Isabel’s explosive was another I recognized immediately: demoness blood.
Scarlet was bound to the wall in the same amber tomb that had held the demons by the lake. All she could move were her eyes. There was no sign of Ori.
I rushed across the room and swung at the amber as hard as I could, but my staff just bounced off. I kept at it, raging away before giving up.
“Fuck!” I shouted.
There was a distant explosion then, and part of the wall fell away. The amber cracked, and then the chunk of it covering Scarlet’s head came free and shattered on the floor in front of me.
“I specifically told you not to pull a Socie,” Delicia said. She was trying to joke but having trouble staying on her feet. With the blood, fire, and dust, I hadn’t noticed the green toxin creeping up her leg.
“Oh, what in the six pixies is this? The pixie we rescued. I guess it worked, thank the Demoness,” Scarlet said.
“Thank Euphoria, you mean,” Delicia replied.
“How is that slut?”
“Still the one true goddess.”
I touched Scarlet’s face, feeling the warmth of her skin.
“I don’t know if I can get you out,” I said.
“You don’t have to. Kill me and let Glitterbutt there fly you out.”
“That’s Miss Glitterbutt, Rescuer of Wayward Demonesses, to you.”
Scarlet stuck her tongue out before returning her gaze to me.
“Do it, please. There are knives in that drawer over there. They... they used them on Ori.”
I wiped away her tear with my thumb. How could there not be a better way out of this? Some method to smash the amber? Like diffuse Vibrate?
I cast it before I could give myself a chance to doubt. It wasn’t on a single point but spread out.
“Oh, my,” Scarlet said, her eyes widening as the amber began to buzz. “Oh... that’s... oh, oh...”
She was entombed in it, as close as a second skin. I hadn’t quite appreciated what that meant. The vibration increased in power as I cast it again, using up the rest of my mana. Scarlet was panting now, and then her eyes rolled back in her head before she let out a sharp gasp.
It was like a signal for the amber to break. It fractured down from her neck to her feet and then spiderwebbed before falling in chunks to the floor. I caught Scarlet as she went with it.
The moment of joy was short-lived. There was an explosion, closer now, and part of the ceiling fell in. My face hit the floor, smashing my teeth, and I felt bones snap. The wall was properly open now, and air gusted in, clearing the dust.
It was bad. Scarlet was crushed and barely breathing. Delicia was facedown, her legs trapped under rock. I struggled out from under the pile, blood pouring from my mouth and crawled across to her. She was still conscious, but the green had now crept its way up to her mouth.
“I’m sorry,” I said, reaching out to take her hand.
“Not... your... fault,” Delicia gasped.
There was a boom somewhere in the distance that popped my ears. Notifications began to flood the screen.
1000 dead! Claim their souls?
2000 dead! Claim their souls?
Five thousand suffering! Draw on their pain? Convert it to power or experience!
It blurred by, the death toll increasing by the second. The Death that Rax had planted under Bron must have gone up. It hit ten thousand dead before the notifications finally slowed, an accept/decline button waiting for me.
I could accept. Take the souls, take the suffering, use it to level up, maybe be able to bond with Delicia... but then I’d be like Rax. Feeding on the dead. I couldn’t do it.
My finger was broken, but it still worked to decline the offerings. The notifications scrolled away and blurred, swirling in front of me before briefly forming the face of sky girl.
“Lucy,” I murmured. My health was nearly gone.
She winked at me, and then gold burst across my vision.
The Third Way... Again! Level up!
You can now bond with another being!
It felt a slight cheat, but hell, I’d take it. I pressed my bloodied hand against Delicia’s.
“Delicia,” I said.
But she was staring at nothing, a trickle of green foam leaking from the corner of her mouth.
“C’mon Delicia, please,” I begged. I slapped at her hand but nothing. With no other options, I grabbed her palm with my shattered hand and cast Bolt.
The pixie was shocked back to life, but I was done. My health sank to zero, and I sank with it.
As I went down into the dark, it smelt like honeycakes, and I heard a soft whisper of my name.
22
For the first time, I didn’t bolt awake and smash myself into a wall or tombstone after coming out of the dark. There was warm sun and lush grass and I awoke slowly, like a Summer sleep-in when it has been hot for days, and then one night, it pours rain, and the temperature finally drops.
I felt... good. Physically at least. The moment I woke up enough, I remembered Bron and the explosions.
It wasn’t the graveyard where I’d spanked Scarlet but another one, to the north-west of Bron. It barely qualified as a graveyard—there were just two graves side by side, the remnants of a rusting fence, and two tombstones worn away to illegibility.
I stood up and stretched before I noticed a new face in my action bar. Delicia. We’d bonded, and I could summon her back to life!
I was reaching to bring Scarlet back first (was there an etiquette to such things?) when I saw movement in the forest. I had my staff out in an instant but then lowered it when I saw it was a trudging line of rabbits and other small creatures.
They were bandaged and bloody. Some were dragging stretchers with other animals on them, rabbits missing legs, and one both ears. They had a dog, a terrier, hauling a cart the size of a pram filled with their dead.
They saw me but were too exhausted to care. One rabbit broke away from the column and approached the graves.
“Names Mort. Are you a healer? Do you have any food or medicines?” he asked.
His waistcoat was torn, but underneath he had a leather breastplate that wrapped around him. He was carrying a broken spear, using it as a walking stick.
“James. Sorry, I’m not a healer. I don’t have any medicine,” I said.
He nodded but then just stood there, slightly swaying on his feet as though the effort of asking had momentarily exhausted him.
“Did you come from Bron?” I asked.
He shook his head and then winced before touching a wound on his neck.
“Down the road. The moles and rabbits have gone to war. Treaties have been called upon, allies coming to aid. There are a thousand dead, and the fighting still continues.”
I don’t know if it was my thought or the system wanting to rub my nose in it, but the list of failed quests popped up in my HUD.
“So, you fought for Augustus?”
“Who? No, we’re allied with the Quickpaws, so we came to their aid. I don’t know what started it.”
He turned and began to walk away, returning to the column of injured animals.
“Where are you marching to?” I called out.
“Socie, maybe? Bron is destroyed. We need food and medicine though or we’re dead,” Mort said.
Through the trees, I could see the line stretched out. There were hundreds of injured rabbits and other animals trudging their way.
Maybe it was having made a hasty decision to talk to Lel rather than fight pushing me, but I made another.
“I have gold, I’ll give it to you,” I said.
I didn’t have as much gold as I thought—only forty pieces now. I guess I died and lost about ten percent and then died again, losing another ten percent. Plus, there must have been some rounding at work.
I gave Mort a gold coin and then the next rabbit and the next (an Otter carrying an ax) until I was flat broke agai
n.
Yeah, I could have used it at Lady Trang’s if it was still standing, but the hell with it. War had sparked off because I hadn’t gone back to pay off the moles to peacefully end the standoff.
It wasn’t my fault, I knew, but this was a consequence, which meant I was connected to it.
Once I ran out of gold, I left the line of animals and went off into the forest for some privacy. The first thing I did (although I was getting hungry), was dig a hole in some soft earth under a tree and drop Reginald’s body into it. After seeing the injured rabbits, I just didn’t want to eat him.
I was pushing dirt over him when I heard a noise in the undergrowth. I stood up and saw a young rabbit bolting away, quickly vanishing.
“Damn it,” I cursed, kneeling to complete my grave. Just what I needed: a witness who saw me burying a pawless rabbit.
I patted the earth down, hoping I’d buried him deep enough to stop something digging him up for a meal.
“Sorry Reginald, I thought you were a low-level digital creature for me to kill and level up. I’m sorry I killed you,” I said as a eulogy.
After ten minutes of walking away from the grave and the wounded, I found myself near a log cabin that I nearly missed it was so well-hidden. The forest had grown up close on two sides of it. I’d approached from the rear where there was a vegetable garden gone half-wild. There were bushy plants growing that fruit the spiders had served me—the one halfway between a tomato and watermelon, plus a few small pumpkins and a grapevine twisting around a small tree that had sprouted inside the low stone wall protecting the yard.
It all looked ruined and abandoned, but instead of stealing what I wanted, I went to the front and knocked on the door first. There was no answer, and the feeling that it was empty grew stronger. Vacant homes have a particular feeling about them. It’s like the soul has gone, the warmth leaked away.
Although I was still in the open(ish), I didn’t want to go in without backup in case this was one of those jumpscare things games did, and there was some hideous monster in the basement, or the dead owners were ghouls hiding in the ceiling.
I summoned Scarlet first. Fingers did their thing and out she sauntered, stretching like a cat.