by John L. Monk
“And what orders are those?” I said.
Ralph rattled off my instructions: the one-to-two hundred ratio, the bit about summoning and raising and dismissing new liches after the ratio was reached, the order to fan out one mile per hundred liches, alternating new masters every ten thousand liches, and of course the part about educating the newly summoned.
“So why are you fighting with each other?” I said.
“We’re not with each other,” Ralph said in a faint tone of exasperation. “We’re defending ourselves from enemy liches. My lord.”
“What enemy liches?” I shouted. “Where did they come from?”
“When we banish them, they break away and start attacking us. They are killing heroes and raising them as their minions.”
“Why aren’t they disappearing?” I said.
“We don’t know. It is curious, isn’t it? Our enemies outnumber us. Soon, they will have taken over completely. But do not worry, my lord, for we are most dutiful in our instructions.”
“Wait a minute, why aren’t you fighting back?”
“You did not order us to, Lord Howard. You were very specific. Would you like me to recite your instructions again?”
“Hold on, let me think.”
“Certainly, my lord.”
“Shush!”
My army was being destroyed from within through a mechanism I couldn’t explain, and it was happening fast. And no wonder, if they weren’t defending themselves.
“Ralph, how many minions do you have?”
“At this point, only one hundred and six. I used to have two hundred. My apologies.”
I shook my head. “Never mind that. Do this: Go down and tell all your minions to fight back. Tell them to tell their minions the same thing, and on like that endlessly. Got it?”
“Yes, Lord Howard. I shall begin immediately.”
I watched as it descended into the war below—then cursed in rage when it was blown out of the sky from multiple sources.
I teleported to a new location—a smaller site with the same thing going on. But even this site had over five hundred thousand, a tenth of whom were slaughtering the rest mercilessly. Once again, I was able to bring up more minions. This time, I told each of them the instructions I’d given Ralph. Most of them made it back down, and I felt like something was finally going my way again. A few hours in and the tide seemed to be turning against the rogue liches. A few hours more and most of the fighting had ceased, though new minions continued to go rogue.
It was only after I teleported to another smallish population that I realized my latest mistake. The Gate spell could only be used three times a day, and I’d just used my third. Even if I could use it repeatedly, nonstop, I only had around eighty gems—and there were thousands of stones across the continent. I could never visit them all in time. A few days from now—a week tops—and my army would be completely destroyed. Already, stones on my map with direct minions had gone dark.
Ralph said these rogues were killing and raising heroes on respawn. Being rogues, they’d have no reason to limit the number of liches raised. They’d do what liches do: kill. And, at least in this instance: keep raising liches.
I felt pretty sure this wasn’t default lich behavior, but they were keeping it up. If they really were rogue, why keep following my orders? And why only part of them?
Curious, I approached the battle and watched the behavior of the rogues. Like me, they could identify who was who. The mass around the binding stone was perhaps half a mile wide, with a bump in the middle like the center of a distant galaxy.
I flew closer to see what was going on, but at my approach, a large group soared out to engage me. From their outstretched hands, something like a hundred beams of multi-colored energy blew through my shield ring and slammed into my Necrotic Aura.
Given my billions of health points, the damage I took was laughable, but that much transmitted pain had me screaming in agony. Being someone who hated agony, I flew up and kept going until they stopped chasing me.
I racked my brains for something—anything—that could stop this virus, this cancer, but it all came back to the problem of mobility. There was simply no way to reach enough locations in time to stop what was coming.
I’d screwed up.
Jane, Bernard, and my elementary school teacher from way back when… They’d been right all along about me. My stupidity had gotten me into more trouble than I could ever hope to get out of, and now everyone was suffering for it.
In other words … I’d destroyed the world.
With fifteen hours to go before I could cast Gate again, I flew until I found a plateau free of liches. I changed my default sleep timer from eight hours to fifteen, then closed my eyes. Fifteen hours later, I got up and cast Gate. Not to Silverlock castle and not to another lich-infested binding stone. No, I opened this one to Heroes’ Landing. Specifically, to just outside a shop called Enchanted Lands.
The Gate opened on a moderately crowded street. The populace, jaded to anything magical, either didn’t notice or didn’t care. More importantly, nobody recognized me.
I entered the empty shop and approached the counter, where a mid-level enchanter-warrior was sitting on a stool reading a bodice ripper, judging by the cover.
“Help you?” she said without looking up.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m looking for a disguise.”
“Party masks are along the back wall, fourth shelf down, green box.”
“Not one of those,” I said. “A disguise. Same concept as the mask, but lasts until dispelled.”
She put down her book and looked at me curiously.
“I can up the duration a few hours, but that’ll push out the cooldown from a month to…” Her eyes glazed over briefly as she accessed the spell description. “A year? I know it’s a long time, but it’s just a party mask. If you want to change your appearance you could always…”
Her eyes drifted to just above my head.
“You’re higher than me,” she said. “You already know you can get a face change. What gives?”
Face changes were available for purchase through Bernard, the Innkeeper.
I shook my head. “I just need something temporary that’ll last longer than the normal mask. How much?”
“It’ll be 800 for the mask, a hundred for the spell. I’ll just need a moment to modify it.”
I transferred 900 gold to her coin purse. She took out 50 and placed it on the counter.
“Be right back,” she said.
A minute later, she returned with a Creepy Party Mask. She took out a number of objects: a silvery rod about the length of my forearm, a long white feather, some sparkly blue dust, and a bottle of some dark substance. These she placed next to the coins.
“What’s that?” I said, pointing at the bottle.
“Ink,” she said. “No talking. I’m about to start. If I lose my concentration, it’ll be ruined and I’ll need to replace all this.”
I closed my mouth and waited.
The woman picked up the feather and tapped a pattern over the mask. Next, she sprinkled it with the dust while spritzing dark red ink on it with her other hand. The ink, when it hit the mask, disappeared in little puffs of colored smoke. She did all this while chanting under her breath in a rush of words non-enchanters couldn’t make out, no matter how carefully they listened.
“What spell are you using?” I said, then remembered I was supposed to be quiet.
“Mighty Rebalancing,” she said, seemingly unbothered. “Lets me move numbers this way and that. The bigger the spell, the bigger the range. Same with the quality of the item. If this were a Ward 3 item, I’d need to destroy millions of gold to match its value. We have a big table in the back just for that purpose.”
I’d experimented with the regular version of the spell long ago during a stint as an enchanter.
“We?” I said.
She smiled slightly. “Me and my husband. We own this shop. Hundred percent player owned. Her
e you go.”
She handed me the mask. When I checked the stats, they were different now: three-hour duration and a one-year cooldown.
“This is great,” I said. “Thank you so much.”
“You too. Don’t get in any trouble with it.”
I smiled. “Where’s the fun in that?”
The enchanter—whose name I hadn’t caught—laughed politely and went back to her novel.
Before leaving, I put on the mask and whispered, “Captain Richards.”
Chapter Forty-Four
Walking the streets of Heroes’ Landing was one of the most emotionally debilitating things I’d ever done. Everyone looked worried, and nobody smiled. My big idea had failed. Everlife didn’t care, and it was a wonder they kept the damned thing running at all.
For the next two and a half hours, I visited various shops and non-exclusive social clubs checking on old friends. Darcy was safe in her shop, Elixirs & Mixers, and so was Milton and his trusty clerk Ken at Milton’s Outfitters. Some friends I’d adventured with eight years ago were running a burger joint now, and when I stopped in, they were all at the bar drinking. As with the people on the street, they weren’t smiling.
Other friends I’d known were less easily traceable, and that’s why I slipped into Parker’s private detective office intending to track them down.
Parker was at his desk with his feet propped up, reading the Mythian Gazette, one of several newspapers in the city. From my place by the door, I could read the headline: “Liches, Liches, Liches! We’re all doomed!”
The Gazette was known for its sensationalist headlines. For the first time, this one seemed a hundred percent accurate.
I stepped carefully over Parker’s threadbare rug so as not to damage it, then waited for him to say something. When he didn’t I said, “I’d like to hire you.”
My souped-up Creepy Party Mask changed my voice to that of Captain Richards.
“Well, hello to you too, Howard,” he said after giving me a quick once-over. “Nice of you to spare me the sentimental treatment. If I start crying, then you’ll start crying, then everyone’ll start crying in a big chain reaction, kinda like that undead army of yours.”
I stared at him dumbstruck. Not because he’d seen through my mask. He was resourceful enough that I wouldn’t have put it past him. But I’d never told him my full plan. Just the basics.
“How did you know?”
“How’d I know the guy who came here with a plan to break the game, but needed a lich spell to do it, was responsible for unleashing millions of liches and breaking the game? I dunno, guess I wasn’t born yesterday.”
Feeling like an idiot, I dropped the mask.
“How did you know it was me?”
“Dory told me,” he said. “Said you’d be stopping by today dressed like Horatio Hornblower. She wasn’t kidding, was she? Wow, that uniform… Anyway, as you can see she’s a pretty good diviner, and she’s also pretty. Real professional type, but I’m working to change all that. Here’s the list you’re gonna ask for.”
He pushed a sealed envelope with my name on it across his battered late-twentieth-century desk. I opened it and pulled out a folded piece of paper with a long list of names—friends and acquaintances I’d planned to ask him to locate for me. Beside each was either an address in Heroes’ Landing or a location outside the city. About a third of them said the latter. Way too many.
Felix and Elfie, I noticed, had addresses listed by their names. They, at least, had made it.
I crumpled into a chair without asking and covered my eyes, but no tears would come. I’d never been much of a crier, and for the first time ever, I wished it were otherwise.
“Dory’s that diviner,” I said.
“Got it in one. She came with your new friends. That paladin you were worried about’s here too.” He shook his head regretfully. “Sorry about the rest.”
I nodded. “Thank you. Shit.”
“Things not going so well?”
“No,” I said, “’things not.’”
In no rush, I related the events leading up to today, including everything that had happened in Ward 4. Parker listened without interrupting.
“For what it’s worth,” he said, “it was a good plan. Until it wasn’t. Now what?”
“We wait, I guess. I’m still leveling. It’ll slow down as the rogues kill all my liches … or my liches’ liches.”
“Sounds confusing.”
I pounded the table. “How could I be so stupid? I just plowed on.”
Parker got up and opened a little glass cabinet. He came back with two shot glasses and a bottle. Below the name—Heresy, Imperial—I saw the word “Calibrated.” He filled both glasses, knocked his back in a smooth gulp, poured himself another, and sat back down, feet up again as if he’d never moved.
“I’m not much of a drinker,” I admitted.
“That’s why the glass is so little. Drink.”
I stared dubiously at the glass, then picked it up and sniffed.
“Never sniff it,” he said.
“Fine.”
I downed it in a throat-scorching gulp that left me coughing afterward. Squinting through the pain, I noticed I couldn’t see his level.
In surprise, I said, “You’re Hard Mode?”
I’d always been lower level than him, so I was never able to squint his level.
“Nope,” he said. “That’s just a perk I picked up. Hides my level from one and all, even diviners. So what are you, a thousand? Five thousand?”
I shook my head.
“Higher?”
I nodded.
“Well?”
“Hold on,” I said.
The level on my character sheet was an indecipherable blur. I took a snapshot of the last few lines of my game status and read off the latest level: “Thirty-four million … two hundred ninety-eight thousand … five hundred and forty-three. As of about five seconds ago.”
Parker gaped at me. “You’re not kidding?”
“No,” I said.
He poured me another drink and one for himself, then gulped it down. After a moment’s hesitation, I drank mine too. Easier this time, though I still coughed afterward.
“How many liches?”
“Hard to say now. Based on the amount of vitality coming in, and my XP per day, I’d say around two hundred and thirty million. That’s not counting the rogues. My level is still going up, but the rate has dropped by around ten percent. I only noticed a day ago. By tomorrow, I’ll have a better idea of whether…” I shook my head. “Actually, no, I won’t have a better idea.”
We sat in silence waiting for the other to say something. He filled our glasses again, and I drank mine again.
“What do you know about Ethan Crane?” I said finally.
Parker shrugged, looking more relaxed than he should have. Probably to make me feel better. Or maybe because he was just relaxed.
“Not much,” he said. “Rumor has it he came to Mythian looking for his dead wife. One thing that’s not a rumor is he killed the Dryad, then brought her to life in Ward 2. Real crazy move, that one. Least he put that sign out telling people to keep away.”
“You think he did it on purpose?” I said. “You know, like a sociopath?”
Parker shook his head. “No. I think it was an accident. The guy was a real noob, they say, but not a lunatic.”
“So how come he’s a god all of a sudden? Doesn’t that seem suspicious?”
“You think the amulet he gave you—you think it’s like the Dryad? Meant to hurt people?”
“It fits a pattern,” I said.
Parker gazed at me, lips pursed in thought. Then he said, “Dory knows him … knew him. Not well, but enough to take his measure. Said he was definitely looking for his wife. She also said he has a temper. Sent the Crimson Sigil guild master to Abaddon for twenty-four hours when she locked his wife in a boobytrapped tower. Couple months later, rumors start flying about how he’s a god.”
I pou
red the next round and it hardly burned at all this time. I was feeling numb—and good, for once. Calibrated whiskey. Didn’t matter what your vit was, it’d do the job.
“So now what?” Parker said.
“Now what, what?” I said.
“Your plan to fix everything. You’re not a sit-around-moping kind of guy.”
“It’s not really a plan,” I said in a sit-around-moping kind of way. “More of a solution. The rogues are still following at least some of my instructions, so it seems they’re still tied to me. If I die, they lose that connection. Maybe they go poof, or maybe they go back to acting like normal liches: killing people, raising them back as skeletons and zombies, and ravaging the countryside. It isn’t normal for them to summon other liches—peers, as they’d see it. That’s just what necromancers order them to do.”
Parker poured the next round.
“Howard,” he said, “I’m just curious, but do you ever have ideas that don’t result in the absolute worst possible outcomes?”
I grunted humorlessly. “I don’t have a death wish, if that’s what you’re thinking. Listen, this Dory person… Can I speak to her? Can you arrange it?”
“She’s pretty busy, but I’ll see what I can do.”
That was odd. “Busy? Doing what?”
“That list of friends I gave you? She’s the one who filled it out. There’s only a handful of diviners in the city, and they’re all busy finding loved ones for people.”
I followed Parker to an upscale, non-Bernard inn called Sweet Drams. Long before we got there, we ran into the crowd waiting to get in.
“Get in line, ya bums!” someone shouted as we pushed our way to the front.
Standing outside the door was an incredibly beautiful woman wearing a set of golden armor. Though she couldn’t physically stop us from entering, the doors were magically sealed to anyone who didn’t have a pass, and she was in charge of passes.
“The line starts back there,” she said.
“Why’s there a line at all?” I said.
“Because I said so, that’s why.”