by John Gold
No sooner had the young man finished his speech than the light on all four screens started to fade. Night fell, and Leon’s heart skipped a beat.
The boy could control light?
At the top of the tree, where the branches started, the light, instead of dying out, actually grew stronger. Suddenly, the picture on all four screens turned crimson, almost as if the world had been doused in blood. Even the flash of light that struck a couple of seconds later appeared red.
“Turn on the negator and the soul trap. Hurry!”
Merlen reacted faster than Leon. The young god was struck mute when the world was enveloped in red tones, stunned that it was happening again.
They could see that the fifty-meter-wide trunk of the tree had been split in half. The replay showed that it had been sliced right down the middle by a giant guillotine blade made entirely of light, cutting through it like a hot knife through butter.
When it hit the ground, the blade exploded, scorching both halves of the trunk. A smoking, meter-wide gap yawned between them.
Merlen, seeing the red cloud drift into the air, asked the question on everyone’s mind.
“Damn, who can even do that? Who is he fighting?”
The silhouette of the boy appeared in the smoke at the very top of the tree, and it was attacked by the archers, mages, and everyone else there before a second could pass. A wild, inhuman shriek broke out. One attack tore his arm off; enchanted arrows thudded into his body. Every spell that was cast hit home.
To everyone’s surprise, the boy grew a new arm. Script appeared on one of the screens.
Undead, Sagie, mage, Level 913
Sagie turned, looked at one of the mages, and made a normal gesture for a magic attack. Nothing happened. He tried again, though the result was the same. The lich looked down at his hand, then at the operator working the magic negator. People were filming the battle from there, the safest spot in the field.
An enormous, light spear flew down from above and split the lich in half, though his health bar didn’t drop at all. All he did was try another pass at the unseen opponent in the crown. His magic was blocked by the negator, however, and the lich was rendered no more dangerous than any other high-level undead.
After glancing back at the operator standing next to the negator, he screeched violently. And then, to everyone’s shock and amazement, half of his body slid down the trunk of the tree. It was like his torso was slipping down the bark. Two wooden shields protected him from the arrows, spears, and magic attacks being hurled at him.
Hair stood up on end for everyone watching in the room. The lich was using magic regardless of the negator, and even half of his body was still just as alive as ever. He remained cool and calm as he took hit after hit that would have killed any ordinary player.
Down on the ground, the body leaped into the crack, merged with the trunk, and cut loose ten bodies at once.
“What is that?!”
Merlen again spoke what everyone else was thinking. It couldn’t be. That was impossible without magic!
Actually, it was impossible even with magic!
The close-combat fighters went after what climbed out of the tree. Their normal PVP and teamwork didn’t have any effect—the lich masterfully dodged them, ripped the swords and shields out of their hands, and started going to town on the warriors who dared come too close. It was only then that they saw the kind of swordsmen the liches were. The warriors from the close-combat squads weren’t just killed; they tripped over roots poking up, and two of the liches tore the shirts off some of the poor guys and started drawing runes on them using their own blood. The other eight undead covered them.
One of the operators noticed wood appearing where an arm had been torn off.
He’s made out of wood? Oh, go–…no, that’s impossible. An ent? No, impossible.
Two groups of fighters tried to take the undead in a pincer movement to stop the blood ritual.
The mages had to pause, realizing that the negator didn’t have any effect on blood magic, as it was based on life, rather than magic forces.
All eight of the liches were fighting, but even in this situation, their precision and coordination were incredible. It was like there was a single consciousness governing them all.
Two orcs armed with two-handed swords jumped in to attack the unwary pair of undead who were just about to wrap up the ritual.
Just when one of them was about to land a blow, an eye belonging to one of the liches slipped around to the back of its head. The second lich, which was on the left, moved his eye around to see the second attacker.
A second later, and the first lich thrust a branch into his orc’s eye.
Both liches worked in complete synchrony, though the second who was attacked was able to dodge the blow sent his way and lop off one of the liches’ arms. Again, wood appeared to replace human flesh.
The second lich rotted away, and his wounded friend grew another pair of eyes and arms.
“Damn monster! How…how is that possible?”
The orc’s second strike was interrupted by three palms, the fourth hand burying itself in his eye. The lich grabbed the two-handed sword, moved two eyes around to the back of his head, inverted his joints, and headed over to the terrified victims prepared for the ritual. The four-armed creature finished the seal on the tenth warrior and started the sacrifice. The silence in Leon’s headquarters grew thicker with each kill.
The tenth lich fell from the tree, attacking a group of mages who were preparing a powerful fire spell. The squad assigned to protect them had just fallen back, leaving them to become easy pickings.
Nobody thought of Sagie as just a mage anymore—they’d seen his skills as a swordsman and master of close combat.
The ritual drew to a close, and the blood from all ten of the victims collected in a single point. A bloodhound appeared at the four-armed lich’s feet to dash off toward the operator.
“Cover the negator! That thing is going to kill the operator!”
The beast’s path was blocked by an entire squad, and spell after spell smacked into it. When the distance between it and the fighters closed to ten meters, roots reached out of the ground to pull down all the squad standing in the hound’s way. It bowled its way to the operator and detonated, killing the mage and destroying the negator.
The liches all howled at the same time. Sagie could have ordered the roots to kill all the fighters at once, but he needed victims for a new bloodhound. And he had them.
Magic was newly returned to his arsenal.
The liches went into attack mode. A couple of minutes later, not a single building was left in the vicinity. The usual fireballs Sagie fired could each kill his enemies with a single shot or take out any fortification. The buildings were ablaze, flames of blood licking at them.
The saints from other gods finally arrived, and a couple of Leon’s saints were scheduled to get there in ten minutes. They were accompanied by regular Darin Empire troops. What Sagie was doing ran afoul of empire law, something Leon was exploiting.
Four saints created a triple-sided strengthening seal and started firing magic off from range. After their first three attacks and the loss of two of his liches, Sagie realized they were trying to pick them off one at a time.
The liches all rotted away instantly, and an unknown creature followed that by crawling out of the wood. It looked something like a six-legged bone creature, only far nastier. It had five pairs of arms and legs that shuffled along the ground to hold it up. Three pairs of eyes in its head gave it vision in every direction. And, as the cherry on top, the thing had two pairs of arms with three joints each. The nightmare was incredibly fast, dodged everything fired at it from long range, and shredded warriors who got too close.
All of that happened in blood tones, rendering the picture even crazier. Not five minutes had gone by, and more than thirty warriors were dead and sacrificed. There were souls flying up to the crown of the tree, too. And what happened to the mysterious op
ponent who killed Sagie?
The saints, having changed their tactics, prepared a group of divine avatars to get in close and try to kill the lich. Sagie, sensing the divine magic, headed in that direction. Stopping at the very edge of the field, he cast eleven dead suns at the same time, combining them into a single wave that engulfed houses, land, and the domes of the municipal buildings.
The saints formed up into a wedge and threw up maximum divine strength shields that would work until the saints’ strength ran out. And seeing how much time they’d invested in building their divine magic, there wasn’t a single spell in existence that could do that much damage. Right then, three black suns smashed into the divine shield, incapable of destroying it. But no sooner had hope of salvation appeared in the saints’ hearts than an enormous black sphere appeared on the tail of the three suns. It buzzed with the power its creator had placed in it. Paying no attention to its wimpy predecessors, it annihilated the divine shields as if they’d never been there in the first place. The aura of death alone was enough to kill all the avatars hiding behind the saints.
Stone shattered, the ground collapsed underfoot, and the nearby buildings crumbled under their own weight. Only the black sun swirled off relentlessly in the direction of the mountain.
The strident cry of the lich rang out over the city. Nobody was left to stand against it. The two remaining operators activated teleportation beacons for the suppression group, and the emperor sent in troops to destroy the undead. An entire legion of elite troops joined the battle.
The Golden Hand’s operational headquarters was outside the city, in a hut on a cliff that offered a fantastic view of Lone Tree Valley as well as the whole city. That was where Leon’s saints teleported to. A group of support mages had already created two strengthening seals designed for fifteen people, each of them using single-use stationary mana storages. The mages were all former soldiers, and the location chosen for the headquarters had been an important strategic position—it was the perfect spot to start an artillery bombardment.
Nate took over command of the suppression forces.
“Use mental attacks. We won’t damage the lich, but we may be able to save the legionnaires’ lives. He’ll lose coordination in his attacks—the mages on the rooftops can use that. Set up earth shields right in front of him to cut down his view. And use Space Magic to keep him pinned there. If he changes his body again, I want a fire attack on the trunk of the tree where they come out of.”
He reminded them once more that their job was to keep the lich in place and mitigate the damage he was doing. The legionnaires would take care of liquidating the target.
The emperor’s forces took over the flanks, maintaining formation and hacking away at the roots trying to latch onto them. The undead’s accuracy suffered significantly, and quite a few of his spells started missing. No matter how strong a mage he was, fifty million stunning and disorientation were too much to ignore.
Still, the lich regained his form less than ten seconds later. Paying no more attention to the mental attacks, it took him just five seconds to find where the bombardment was coming from. A powerful gravitational blow did absolutely nothing to Sagie. His magic shield took the colossal damage, and he was able to replenish it in between the scattered shots he was taking at the saints.
The legionnaires, by then, had gotten a hundred meters from the lich and were preparing to attack when they were hit by a dragon breath. Even thirty meters away from where it hit, the heat changed their minds. Their commanders decided to wait for their opponent’s strength to subside.
Sagie’s eye was caught by the lone hut from which two saints were preparing to hit him with a targ hammer. Their spell distorted space and gravity, collecting the weight of all the material objects in their field into a single gravitational ring, and the hammer pounded home across a ten-meter circle. For ten seconds, the target took fifty million damage a second. Few examples of anyone surviving a strike like that had ever been recorded, and they were all high-level monsters or divine beings.
Lightning streaked out of the crown of the lone tree to smack into one of the stationary mana storages. The explosion was so strong that it brought down the entire cliff, and not one of the saints survived.
Less than a second later, a column of light blazed into the lich and erupted in an explosion that destroyed Sagie.
New liches were already climbing out of the tree when something like white lightning pierced the trunk from roots to tip. Stopping by the spot the undead had crawled out of, the unknown creature struck the trunk with its hand, burying it up to the elbow in wood.
“Ars lux. Anima contritio.”
The liches froze, twitched, and stopped. Having not had enough time to climb all the way out of the tree, they froze like lifeless dolls. An insufferable light poured from under the bark, and the tree quickly turned black. Darkened leaves rained down on the legionnaires.
The unknown mage disappeared. Just a flash was all the people watching saw on their screens, and then the mysterious rescuer, who was dressed as a light mage, was gone without a trace.
Silence reigned in Leon’s headquarters. Everyone just stared at the remains of the tree and the attack group.
The results of the battle were depressing: the mobile respawn point was destroyed, as were two of the four negators. Only the two support squads guarding the other two negators had survived. Sagie had killed four saints himself; his rescuer had taken out another pair.
Merlen, yet again, spoke for the group.
“What just happened?!”
***
Things were calm in Tiamat’s cozy office. The man himself was sitting in a chair by the panoramic window, Idzumi’s kiir purring on his knees just like any Earth cat. The portal keeper himself had headed off to see Set, as the trial zone needed to be cleaned up before the next group arrived.
Death was sitting in his chair enjoying a minute of silence. With the beginning of active operations in that world, the director didn’t have much time left to relax. There, in the Sea of Madness, ten kilometers deep, eternal peace was kind.
Krash teleported into the office, just the look of him enough to tell Tiamat how tired he was. He was still dressed in his shapeshifter fighting outfit.
“How did you get so beat up?”
“You didn’t tell me anything about that Sagie. All you said was that he’d demonstrated some abilities characteristic of an illegal chosen one, but what I saw today was nothing like the videos from five years ago.”
The kiir, smelling singed fur, stared at the shapeshifter.
“What happened?”
“Sagie activated a low-level resonance. I was able to kill him before he reached the danger line, general cellular and mental instability at the cellular level. After he died, the lich fused with the tree and split his consciousness into eleven fragments—a swordsman and close-combat fighter, blood magic, chimerology, Space Magic, Fire Magic. What I saw today was so extraordinary that I can barely call him just a potential chosen one.”
“You pushed him to activate the resonance yourself. Why are you so surprised about what happened?”
“No, it isn’t the resonance. Sagie isn’t the first wanderer to have the undead curse, and the lich expresses all the person’s hidden desires. It follows their morals, principles, and convictions, acting on instinct. What I saw today was complete hatred toward people. He had no problem doing absolutely anything to save his own skin. He killed, cheated, hid, made sacrifices, struck from the back, faked weakness. He even hid his main body in the tree, not leaving it until the end of the battle.”
Tiamat listened to the shapeshifter, well aware that he was telling the truth. Still, he couldn’t divulge information about the trial subjects even if Krash was coming from a good place and was one of humankind’s strongest representatives.
The shapeshifter, for his part, also understood that Tiamat was bound by the rules, and so he made sure the answer to his next question wouldn’t break them.
&nbs
p; “How much don’t I know about him?”
“A lot. Quite a lot. That’s your world, so why don’t you look for information there rather than here?”
Krash thought to himself for a second before nodding and logging out of the game. Over the past week, an enormous amount of information on Sagie’s life in the game had been published online.
The answer, perhaps, was there.
***
I’m sitting in the dark astral, waiting for the hour to be up so I can jump back into Project Chrysalis.
I know I broke and pushed myself too close to the edge. Another minute of the anger I had inside me, and I would have died. With my consciousness swimming, I didn’t know up from down. For some reason, pictures from the infonet are whirling around me, and I feel calm and comfortable. That must be the med capsule easing me into wanting to sleep. Yeah, right! I’m the wrong person for that—after all, I’m not physically capable of sleeping until the damaged part of my brain has been restored.
Time passes, and I start to feel like myself again. My head, even with what the med capsule is doing, feels like it’s wrapped in cotton. I would estimate that I’m no higher than thirty percent in control of my consciousness.
I’m sent back to the respawn point by the city’s eastern border. Femida sent me a message saying she was leaving Kurg and telling me to meet her twenty kilometers from here.
Moving quickly, I change into my Almark outfit and set off toward the meeting point. I have to pick my way through a snow-covered forest, though that’s still better than what I’m sure are heavily patrolled roads.
Along the way, I come across a herd of deer out foraging for a late breakfast. And that’s when I see Femida’s fire.
She’s sitting on a log, her face to a cliff as she watches the flames. Her living armor is sitting next to her, tossing wood into the fire. When I walk up, they jump. It’s almost like they think I’m a monster about to eat them.
