Viridian Gate Online: Nomad Soul: A litRPG Adventure (The Illusionist Book 1)

by D. J. Bodden

  “He had a pass! He was on the list for the day! No one even knows what he does here. I mean he’s HR, but he was always messing around with the AIs and talking to you, and Osmark, and—”

  “Jeff?”

  “Yes, Ms. Bullard?”

  “You said he’s in the game?”

  “I did. I could unsay that if it’s useful.”

  “The actual game? Not the test server.”

  “Yeah.”

  “How long?”

  Jeff checked his watch. “Coming up on twenty-one hours.”

  “Great.”

  “Is it?”

  “It is. But should that screen be flashing red?”

  Jeff turned to look at his workstation. “Oh, shit.”

  “ALAN! ALAN, WAKE UP!” Jeff yelled into my ear.

  I opened my eyes, smelled the stench of smoke and unwashed bodies, panicked, and fell about a foot and a half in the dark. I rolled onto my side. I was in a wood-ceilinged room. Where the hell am I? I could feel my heart pounding in my ears, and I was lightheaded. Had I drunk too much last night? Was I still drunk?

  I could make out the shape of bodies lying in the half dark. Shafts of light came in from half-boarded windows. What am I doing here? This didn’t look like home. It didn’t look like California. I’d seen some old towns in Spain that looked like this—old Roman cities—but nothing on this side of the Atlantic.

  The room smell like BO and rotten eggs. Some of the bodies looked like they were dead. Others shifted slightly. One man scratched his ass.

  “Alan! We’re losing the signal, man! Nod if you can hear me!”

  I nodded. I was Alan. That was Jeff. The Rutting Boar. I came here with Horace. It was all coming back to me.

  I felt a jag of pain in my forehead, just above my right eyebrow, and I grabbed at my face. “Gah!” It was like I’d been stabbed with a piece of broken glass. My stomach clenched.

  “Oh, come on!” Jeff said, and I heard him take off his headset.

  I was breathing fast.

  “Hold on, boy,” Horace said, finding his way to me in the dark. I suppose it wasn’t any different than full daylight to him. He pushed a small round shape into my hands. “Eat this.”

  “Unh,” I said, wincing. “What?”

  “It’s just bread,” he said.

  The last thing I needed was food. I wanted to vomit, but I couldn’t seem to get rid of the feeling of wrongness that made me want to jump right out of my skin.

  I heard a squeal of feedback, then it was Sandra, not Jeff, speaking into my ear. “Alan? Can you hear me?”

  I nodded.

  “Good. Alan, this is important. I need you to do whatever it is you did last time, or we’re going to lose the connection to the server farm. You’re down to the lowest signal the system will allow.”

  The server farm. I was in Viridian Gate Online. This is normal, I told myself. I got my breathing under control. I needed to anchor myself to the world, fast, and of all the sensory data V.G.O. was feeing me, taste was the strongest. I needed food. I could see Horace’s silhouette in the dark, as if he was waiting for me to catch up.

  “Go on, boy. Eat.”

  I broke the crusty roll with my thumbs. I could feel the flour the roll had been dusted with on my fingers. I shoved a piece into my mouth and chewed. It was a dense, wholemeal bread with little seeds in it. It broke down in my mouth, starches to simple sugars and the sweet, sticky taste of molasses. I swallowed and felt a sense of calm and rightness spread across my chest.

  “That’s it, Alan, keep it up,” Sandra said.

  Oh crap, Sandra! “I need to get out of here,” I whispered to Horace, stuffing the rest of the bread into my mouth.

  He grabbed me by the sleeve and led me to the exit without hesitating or stumbling. We unbarred the door and stepped outside.

  “I need to talk to my people on the other side,” I told Horace.

  “You do what you need to. I’m going to scrounge some breakfast from June. Things are usually slow on Kronos’s day.”

  “Kronos’s...” Saturday. Saturn was the Roman god of seasons and time. “I’ll see you later, Horace!” I yelled after him, and winced. My headache was still pretty bad, but that might have been the beer rather than my unconscious body trying to pull me back to another world.

  Horace waved over his shoulder and turned the corner around the inn.

  “Sandra?”

  “Yes, Alan?”

  “I can explain.”

  “I think you’d better.”

  “MISTRESS THALIA! THEY’RE releasing him!”

  “Who?”

  “The man who killed Executor Weiz, Mistress. Provus Considia came to visit the precinct, and now they’re going to let him go.”

  Thalia took off at a run. The information was at least ten minutes old. With Gaia’s favor, the watchmen would be slow to do the paperwork.

  She ran with the lightness of a daughter of the Shining Plains, showing no sign of her fifty-two years of age. The pavement was hard beneath her thin-soled leather boots.

  A warmaiden of the Hvitalfar racing to battle drew attention and marked memories, so once she was a few blocks from the shelter, she ducked into a side street, crouched, and cast a fireball at the ground as she jumped. The explosion scorched the walls and launched her high enough to grab the lip of the roof. She took damage, but her class-based resistance to fire and the items she had equipped reduced it to the feeling of standing too close to the fire, rather than a second-degree burn. She kicked and hauled herself up the same way she’d climbed the ancient trees outside of Allaunhylles as a child, then took off across the tiled roofs as fast as before.

  “SO THAT’S ALL THERE is to it,” I told her.

  “Alan, you went against the Board’s instructions.”

  “Those instructions were never communicated to me.”

  “They were communicated to the entire team by the CEO of the company. Viridian was dead.”

  “Lazarus, come forth!” I said.

  Sandra laughed, which I took as a good sign, both in terms of how much trouble I was in and my IRL crush’s education. “Rob is going to be so pissed.”

  “Pissed as in ‘Fire Alan’ or pissed as in ‘Why couldn’t he do this before I bent over in front of the Board?’”

  Sandra didn’t answer for a moment. I waited. I found people who took a second to think gave answers worth waiting for. “It might be a bit of both. Wagner is going to claim Robert knew about this. But when Viridian moves forward, the shareholders are going to be ecstatic. The bigger the stink Wagner makes, the stronger the blowback. This might be what we need to get him fired. You’ll play along?”

  “As long as you keep me in the loop? Yeah, within reason.”

  “Rob will—”

  “You, Sandra. I know Rob cuts his losses when he has to.”

  Another pause. “All right.”

  “If it helps, I own the configuration data.”

  “You what?”

  “I own the configuration data. All the changes Jeff and Kronos made, they’re mine.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “They scanned my brain.”

  “With your permission.”

  “I didn’t sign any consent forms.”

  “You’re an employee of the company, Alan.”

  “An employee of the company who took on a side project in his own spare time. Viridian died, remember? The CEO announced it in front of a hundred people.”

  “Okay. Yeah, that could work. Just don’t try it with Robert or he’ll pay you off and spend the next ten years ruining you. Did you plan this?”

  “I might have thought of it.” I hadn’t until now, but I wasn’t going to pass up a chance to look smarter than I was. You can blame Horace or Sandra’s legs, whichever makes you feel better.

  THALIA RAN STRAIGHT-backed on the balls of her feet. She was completely sober for the first time in a while, her mind fully engaged by her every step. There was a trick to roof
running that had nothing to do with magical lightness or high Dexterity. Fearlessness helped with speed, but it did nothing to solve the issue that roofs, especially tiled ones, were not built to be run on. Tiles slipped, roofing collapsed, people in the streets below might be hit by falling shingles or look up when she leaped the gap between buildings. Falling was unavoidable. The trick was controlling the fall.

  A tile slid out from under her, and she rode it, sinking her weight, then she leaped across the alley as the tile cleared the gutter. She tried to find flat terrace roofs when she could, though the width of the gaps and the planks left by roofers or the Thieves’ Union sometimes forced her path to go wide. She could see the opening of the plaza ahead, and the blocky bulk of the bannered precinct itself, only a few hundred yards distant.

  A tile broke. Her foot sank in, and she tucked into a roll, scattering more tiles. She tried to stand, slipped again, and sailed over the edge of the roof.

  Traditionally, Dawn Elves built their homes in trees, and only the Accipiter were more comfortable with heights. Thalia reacted to the sensation of weightlessness without thinking; she curled, twisted her torso, then her legs, and reached. She flashed to the memory of Weiz’s face when he saved her from a fall, ten years ago, and her fingers closed on the ledge behind her. Her body jerked to a stop, then swung down until she planted her feet on the building, jumped, and cast another fireball. The blast wrecked the wall and shot her across the street to the next line of roofs. She landed lithely and kept running, unfazed by the near-death experience; dwelling on things got you killed.

  She reached the midpoint in the line of roofs leading to the plaza and skidded to a stop, but a dark, roiling shape made of cracked ash, steam, and glowing coals shot forward like a hellish copy of her body. She’d summoned her ash elemental to go the rest of the way.

  Though it was mostly made of hot air, ash, and flame, Thalia’s anger imbued the elemental with weight. It ran forward like a man trying to run on water, sinking through the tiles until it disappeared below the roof in a thick black trail of smoke. Then it started taking out walls. Stone and mortar exploded into shrapnel as it crashed through three floors and four rooms, killing a housekeeper, a pair of playing children, and a family of four who’d just come back from the market. Then it burst out through the outer wall into the plaza itself.

  Thalia saw it all through the elemental’s eyes, the creature’s molten spirit merged with hers. She gave it direction; it lent her detachment. The bodies were broken things, no different than the tiles, masonry, and furniture she’d shattered. They’d quickened as she passed, becoming flame, eyes popping in sockets and flesh splitting away.

  The elemental thundered forward, plowing people under without pause if they got in its way. It filled the air with smoke and sparks. It roared, cracked, and hissed like a stoked furnace. Herd instinct took over, and the survivors screamed and ran, unwittingly providing the creature with cover from the precinct.

  GORK KEPT A FIRM GRIP on the prisoner’s bound wrists as he marched Erik up the stairs.

  He’d talked the captain into releasing the Wode; Erik Stormson was properly registered as a foreign resident, regularly employed, and it was the only offense on the man’s record. Gork would stop by the man’s house after a few days, once he was sober and had recovered from the enthusiastic questioning. This was leniency, not injustice, and the Wode needed to understand that or he’d wind up dead or back in a cell.

  Gork paused at the top of the stairs. The hairs on his arm rose. Something wasn’t right.

  The outer door exploded into splinters, and a cloud of ash, lit from within by bursts of flame, rushed in to fill the space.

  Gork acted in accordance with his nature. He was a proud man of the city watch, sworn to defend New Viridia’s inhabitants, so he yanked the prisoner back and pitched him down the stairs. But he was half Risi, so he bellowed and charged into the fight. He could see two glowing coals that looked like eyes in the center of the dark cloud. He drew his short sword on the run and lowered his head.

  It was that moment that finally won him the acceptance of his peers after years of hostility and suspicion. It was a moment that required music. The broken bodies of the watchmen who’d been close to the door. The half-Risi wreathed in smoke and flame, moving at a dead sprint, battle madness in his eyes. His captain, frozen on the stairs to the second floor, and his shift-mates stopping their flight to cover to witness, with awe and sorrow, as Gork sacrificed himself.

  Or tried to. Faster than its bulk would have suggested, the ash elemental dodged around the corporal and shot down the stairs, where it found Erik dazed but unharmed.

  It embraced him. Erik screamed. Boiling ash filled his lungs.

  THALIA BLINKED HER eyes and stood, 140 yards away. She could still hear the Wode’s screams ringing in her ears, feel his skin bubble and pop as he struggled in her arms. She didn’t feel bad about it. She didn’t feel good. He’d taken something from her.

  She lowered herself over the edge of the roof and dropped from balcony to balcony. When she reached the street, she walked away.

  BACK IN THE CELLS, the second prisoner hadn’t moved from her corner. She stared at her hands with the fascination of a child. They were smooth, filled out, strong, with the beginning of calluses across her palms. She folded and unfolded them, and they didn’t catch, creak, or click. She swallowed, almost laughing at how nervous she was, and swept her left hand under the hood to feel her hair.

  She closed her eyes, exhaling, sagging against the wall. Her hair was thick and full. It was short on the sides, because being comfortable in her helmet was more important to her than looks, and three inches long and layered on top, because even a warrior was allowed her vanity. She closed her fingers around a handful of it and tugged, still worried, but none of it came away in her hands.

  With those assurances, she brought both hands to her face, and she sobbed at what she felt there. The skin was supple and smooth. Her cheeks and jaw were sharp, the skin on her neck tight, the muscles defined as she poked and prodded. No baby fat, but that was fine. Youth was an ideal that was always seen looking backward. She was a woman in her prime. She wiped the tears from her cheeks.

  It had been ten years since Gaius betrayed her. The Griffin of New Viridia had sheathed his claws, hung his sword up, and become a statesman while he cowered in his room in the palace. She’d watched that beautiful man wither behind a desk, depriving himself of his desires for family and glory for the sake of peace. She wasn’t bitter, though, because the survivors always betrayed her in the end.

  Now she could feel suspicion and fear spreading across the city. The deployment of soldiers the previous day had been surgical and neat, something the bloodless citizens had been able to sweep under the rug or explain away with gossip or politics, but this was fire and smoke and blood. It was messy. She could taste the ash and grease in the air.

  She laughed and pulled the robe over her head, crumpling it up and tossing it. Her arms were well formed, her muscles firm, her skin tight at the elbows and armpits, where it had piled up in disgusting folds only minutes before. Ten years of feeding off alley muggings and highway banditry, off honor duels and family rivalries turned violent. War was coming to New Viridia. She could feel it whispered to burning ears, said solemnly from father to son, and in the pained expression of mothers.

  She rolled to her feet in her tunic, pants, and boots. Two strides took her across the cell, and she kicked the door so hard it flew off its hinges and slammed against the cells opposite her. She stepped over the charred Wode’s corpse and walked upstairs.

  The watchmen saw her and knew her. Their anger and fear fed her.

  “Bless us, Enyo!”

  “Avenge us!”

  As her power returned, her aura lapped out in red waves, building on the turmoil within them and healing their wounds. They didn’t heal cleanly, though, and those that lived would talk proudly of their scars. Some gripped their swords. Eyes met, and wordless compact
s were made.

  She stepped through the ruined door into the fresh air and greeted the blue-bannered city for the first time in a decade. She needed armor and a sword. That fat fool Felix from Bespoke Arms and Artifices was going to get the chance to outfit a god.

  “OKAY, SO WE’RE AGREED. I... hold on a second, Sandra,” I said. A message from Titus had come through.

  <<<>>>

  Personal Message:

  Dear Alan,

  I was able to find a buyer for that armor of yours. As per our discussion, I’ve decided to leave town and reconnect with some old friends while I can. Could you stop by the shop right away to pick up your share of the sale?

  Regards,

  —Titus

  <<<>>>

  I sent him a quick answer to let him know I was coming and closed the messaging window. “Hey, Sandra? I’ve got to go take care of something.”

  “What? Alan, come on! We need to work out how we’re going to approach Robert with this. He sent me here to kick both your asses. He’s still going to be mad you went around his back.”

  “We’ll do it later!” I said, and started speed walking toward Titus’s shop. A pair of men came out of the inn, yawning, and more people were on the streets than just a few minutes ago. Somewhere, toward the sunrise, a bell was ringing, and I could see smoke rising above the cityscape. New Viridia was coming alive.

  I was checking my map and walking as fast as I could when I ran headlong into the gray Risi who’d tried to kill me and Provus.

  FIFTEEN

  “WELL, WELL, ’ARRETT. Look who I just ’ound.”

  I scrambled to my feet. It was both of them—the gray Risi and the scar-faced Imperial from the day before.

  “Kill him,” Garrett said, drawing a knife.

  Garrett fell into what looked like a professional knife-fighter’s stance, and I flinched as the Risi made his knuckles crack by flexing his fists. I was coming around to Horace’s opinion that I wasn’t a fighter. I ran.