by David Petrie
Kira's face and chest heated up, but with nowhere to hide, she just stood there helpless, looking from left to right as if begging for someone to rescue her.
Farn stepped up to the role. The Shield didn't have any spare clothing to offer, so she just stepped in front, giving Kira someplace to hide.
She leaned close to Farn's back and peaked around her heroin's shoulder at the rest of the group, staring daggers at the offending members.
Max burst out laughing. It was probably the only way that he could deal with what he’d seen.
"It's not funny," cried Kira as Kegan joined the laughter.
"It is a little funny," the Leaf responded.
She looked to Farn for defense, but the Shield was too busy looking away at the ground.
That was when Ginger stepped in and wrapped one arm around her shoulder. "I'm sorry everyone saw you naked. But I think it's just as weird for the guys, if that makes you feel better."
"No. No, it doesn't." Kira squirmed.
Corvin spoke up, still blindfolded by his eye patch. "Is it okay to look? Are you good now?"
Kira frowned and answered from behind Farn. "Yeah, I'm fine." She turned to Ginger. "Can I get my gear back?"
Ginger responded by pulling her close into a nurturing hug. "Oh, Kira, my nauseatingly adorable little Kira," she said in a gentle tone. "Is there anything else I can do for you?"
"No. Mostly I'd just like my stuff back," Kira cut through her friend's attempt to stall as she was pressed against the Coin in an uncomfortable embrace.
Ginger paused, squeezing her tighter. "Well, I can't give your things back right now."
"Why is that?" Kira asked, her voice almost a growl.
"Mostly because you're just so cute like this, and I wouldn't want to hinder your progress in becoming more comfortable with your body as a woman." She paused again before adding, "Also, I totally dropped your stuff in the passage while being chased by the spiders."
"What!" Kira cried out just as Ginger pulled the fairy’s face into her chest for an involuntary motorboat, holding her there until her stream of muffled obscenities ended.
Finally, after she had given up trying to get free, the Coin released her captive and apologized. "I am really sorry." She at least sounded sincere
Kira let out a sigh, unable hold onto the anger. "I know you are. It's okay." She lowered her head.
"Do you think we could open the door again and see if anything's salvageable?" Farn looked in Max’s direction.
He shook his head. "I'm not sure anything could survive that. It probably got deleted along with the spiders. We can look, but I wouldn't get your hopes up."
Before any of them could say anything further, a low gurgling echoed through the room.
"What was that?" Kira ducked and looked around the space, now realizing the size of it.
They stood in a wide circle, surrounded by tall stone pillars attached to a ceiling at least fifty feet high. Torches lit the space, one on each column. Around the outer perimeter ran a deep channel of water that formed the moat that Kira had emerged from when she’d entered. A wooden bridge crossed the gap near the entrance. Looking up at the domed ceiling, Kira saw a strange glass orb embedded in its center about six feet wide and colored a deep crimson.
Corvin cringed a little. "Does anyone else feel like this room looks like an arena?"
"Yeah, it kinda screams boss fight to me," Max gave words to what Kira was feeling.
The low gurgle sounded again, followed by scraping, and then a moan.
"It's coming from over there." Max pointed, just as it came again from the opposite side. Then again and again from all around them. Whatever it was, they were surrounded.
A hand rose from the moat, gray flesh gripping the side of the channel and pulling the source of the sound into view. Then another behind the group, then more beside them, then everywhere. Hands of rotted flesh reached out as the creatures dragged themselves out of the water. They looked … hungry.
Chapter Thirty
Max had always loved zombies. Hell, everyone did. Zombie movies, zombie games, and zombie television shows had always done well. Ever since people started to fantasize about the collapse of modern society to get out of work, debt, and other responsibilities, they'd had a surge of popularity. Despite all that, he didn’t want to actually meet one. In a fully immersive fantasy game where players actually had to stand face to face with their enemy, Max had always assumed that the developers had decided that zombies were a little too intense. That was probably why, in the world of Noctem, zombies had been replaced by a less scary version of themselves in the form of ghouls. Now, ghouls weren't exactly pretty to look at either, but they at least had the majority of their skin and didn't try to eat you.
The forms that emerged from the water all around him were not ghouls. No, these were full-on, rotting flesh, tattered clothing, gory wounds, dangling organs, try to eat your face, high on bath-salts zombies.
Max ordered the team together in the center of the room, their backs against each other to form a protective circle around Kira as nearly twenty of the foes closed in.
A drop of water fell from the glowing red orb in the ceiling, landing on Kira's nose. She wiped it off on her wrist as Max tried his best not to look at her from the neck down.
"I guess this is definitely Plague then," he commented, stating the obvious identity of the new horseman they faced.
Kira released a heavy sigh before surprising him by stepping out from behind everyone. "I'll get in the air," she stated before Max had a chance to suggest it himself. She took a deep breath as if savoring one last moment before abandoning whatever sense of modesty she had left. Then she took flight.
Having his Breath mage safely in the air, Max ordered the others to fan out to split up the growing enemy horde. "Keep moving, and don't get boxed in," he added as even more of the foul creatures emerged from the water.
"Oh god. I can't believe I was swimming in there with those things." Kira shuddered while hovering in the air above. "I knew that water tasted gross."
Despite being outnumbered, Max still felt confident, as handling large quantities of moderate enemies was his strong suit. Of course, that was when he remembered he still had a skill he could learn. He holstered his guns and took out his journal, dodging the grabby hands of the dead as he did.
"Not really the best time for that," Ginger commented as a few enemies closed on her.
"Sorry!" Max yelled in a muffled voice as he held his pen in his mouth and searched for his skills page.
Farnsworth looked like she had the situation under control, since her strength stat increased her weapon damage enough to cut through multiple limbs in a single swing. She didn't get many kills that way, but she did leave a trail of legless zombies crawling in her wake. When she got swarmed, she just activated her shield and shoved her way through like a truck.
Corvin wasn’t so lucky. Sure, he carried a small club as an equipped weapon, but he hardly ever used it. He usually just left it hanging under his robe since it wasn’t his job to hit things. He was better off staying on the sidelines, but when each zombie took more than two Shrapnel spells before dropping, he didn’t have much of an option. In an endurance fight against a horde like this, he needed to be conservative. Their mana vials wouldn't last forever.
Like Corvin, Ginger was also having trouble. Her dagger lacked the range of other weapons. Max cringed as he watched her stab her way through the crowd, getting clawed and bit as she went. She shrieked and clutched her stomach as the poison inflicted by each hit stacked, evolving into a sickness status that made her impossible to heal until it was removed.
Finally, scrawling a few numbers in his journal and adding a check mark at the end to accept the changes, Max learned level five of his Custom Rounds skill. "Things are about to get explosive," he said to himself as he converted his magazines. He just hoped that, like ghouls, the zombies shared the same weak point.
They did.
Cr
imson chunks of glowing flesh detonated from the back of their skulls as he dashed from one to another. Run, duck, dodge, slide, fire, repeat. Simple as that.
Max weaved between two of the monsters just as Corvin started to get overwhelmed, firing twice without looking to take out both. He spun and dropped three more at close range as one closed in behind him. Just before being grabbed, he fired from a low angle up through the chin of his attacker. The top of its skull exploded in a way that was viscerally satisfying. He moved on before it hit the floor, leaving Corvin speechless.
Ginger fell as one of the creatures grabbed her, a crimson glow swelling across her shoulder as its teeth clamped down. Then its head burst to the bark of another explosive round.
Before Max could take out the others surrounding her, Kira swooped in, removing the injured Coin's sickness and setting off an area of effect heal that brought her back to full as well as killing the surrounding zombies at the same time. The fact that light magic was a weakness for undead creatures had turned the fairy into a force to be reckoned with. With that knowledge, she continued to carpet bomb the place with healing spells, only stopping briefly to land and drop a few more spells into her queue before taking off again. Her killing spree was cut short when Max called up to her.
"They just keep coming, and the boss's health isn't dropping. Do you see anything from up there that might stop them?" He glanced at the lengthy bar, representing the Nightmare that ran down the edge of his forearm.
"No, but I'll keep an eye out," Kira called back before flying up to the top of the ceiling for a better view. A moment later, she shouted back down. "There's nothing out of place, well, other than the dozens of zombies pouring out of the water."
"That's not helpful." Max took out three of the creatures.
Suddenly, Kira yelled back down. "Crap! Stop fighting! Stop fighting! Stop fighting!" Her voice climbed higher with each word.
Max released the tension in his trigger fingers and looked up at her while making a point of raising one eyebrow to make his expression as incredulous as possible. "Why?"
She stopped in mid-air looking annoyed. "‘Cause you just killed three and six more crawled out of there." She pointed toward the edge of the room.
Max followed her finger to the moat as six extra hungry looking forms flopped onto the floor like dead fish before pushing themselves up. He glanced around, taking a count and realizing the number of enemies had almost tripled. He let out an awkward, "Yikes," and holstered his pistols, pretending that he hadn't been exploding the creatures’ heads a few seconds before.
Corvin switched up fast and cast several area of effect poison spells to function as healing for the wounded enemies to prevent his team from killing any more by accident.
"Any sign of which one is the actual horseman here?" Max called up to Kira.
"No, they all look the same, and none of them seem to be behaving any different. I think they all are," she responded from her place, safe in the air, where she hovered with her arms folded, looking a little too casual.
"Okay, everybody, keep an eye out. I think we're missing something," Max ordered as he dodged a few more grabby hands and considered the possibility of a collective, hive-like, Nightmare. It was possible, and in a way, it kind of made sense. If it was meant to be the horseman of Plague or Pestilence or whatever they wanted to call it, then it stood to reason that the endless supply of small enemies was supposed to represent a virus. If that was the case, then killing a few didn't matter. No. To win, they would have to find a cure.
Chapter Thirty-One
Kira checked her mana as it drained little by little from the continued use of her wings. She had to land at some point and get a mana vial from someone before she ran out. Although, with the room below being overcrowded with the hungry undead, she didn't love the idea of going down there. She cursed Ginger for losing her bag along with her items and clothes. Then she felt bad for doing so since it wasn't really the Coin's fault. Actually, if she was going to be mad at anybody, she should’ve been mad at Carver for setting all of this up. She cursed his name. Then did it again a few more times for good measure.
Beneath her, the others changed their strategy from offense to just staying on the move while searching the arena for anything they might have overlooked, which was more difficult than it sounded, again, due to the arena's overcrowding. She watched for an opening to land.
Corvin ran to put some distance between himself and a group of determined zombies, only stopping near the center of the floor to catch his breath.
It looked like he wouldn't be grabbed for at least a few moments, so Kira took the chance to drop to the ground in front of him.
He stumbled backward in surprise.
"You mind if I steal a vial? I'm running a bit low?" she asked, making a point of holding her hands out beside her to illustrate the point that she was obviously not carrying any on her person. She had given up on being modest. It was too late for that at this point. At least she had dried off, for the most part, making her tiny garments opaque once again.
"Oh, ah… umm," he stuttered in response before fumbling with his item bag. A second later, he presented her with two silver vials.
Kira downed one and tucked the second into the side of her underwear, drawing his eye in the process. She threw the empty over her shoulder, hitting a zombie that was stumbling toward her in the head. It let out a confused groan. She ignored it and thanked the blushing Venom as she turned to take off, inadvertently thanking him again with a spectacular view of her rear. That was when a drop of water fell from the orb that sat in the center of the ceiling and landed on the head of the zombie that approached her. It winced, as if burned, its skin sizzling loud enough for her to hear it. She turned to look at Corvin who had noticed the same thing. She looked back up at the orb, feeling stupid for not checking it out sooner. She shot toward it without hesitation, leaving Corvin to tell the others of the discovery.
Once there, she stopped in mid-air, hovering just below the shape embedded in the ceiling. Her figure probably appeared as the perfect image of a traditional fairy with her lack of clothing. All she needed was a giant flower to sip dew drops from, and she would be good to go. Although, now, looking at the orb close up, she couldn't have been further from good to go.
It was damp with streaks of condensation running from its edge and collecting at its center before falling in intermittent droplets. She held out her hand to catch one, but it felt no different from a drop of rain. She licked her finger. It was just water, though it tasted clean, unlike the contents of the moat below. She reached up and touched the orb. It felt cool. In fact, it was the first thing in the whole dungeon that didn't have the same sticky warmth to it. Around its edges she noticed text, the letters worn with virtual age. She circled it, adjusting her angle to get a better look.
It read, ‘For the bearer of the code, I open.’ Then on the other side, ‘The cold-blooded has the key.’
She pulled back a bit. "Well, Carver's not being very subtle," she said to herself as she dropped back down to the others, landing in an opening near Max. "We need some kind of code to open that thing. It says the cold-blooded has the key. Which I assume means that Alastair has what we need."
"How the hell are we supposed to get it from him? Even if we could contact him, he couldn't send it to us anyway." Max sounded annoyed.
Corvin jumped in, quite literally as he leapt over the clawing arms of one of Farn's legless zombies. "We could have one of us log out and contact him from outside."
"I guess that works. Hopefully, he'll know what to do here," Max agreed and gave Corvin the okay to head out.
The mage paused a moment, rummaging through his bag before handing all his remaining mana vials to Max.
The logout process would take thirty seconds, but during that time, Corvin would have to stay in one place until it completed. It was an opportunity that the horde wasn't about to waste.
They converged on the reynard boy like ants at a picnic
, forcing Max and the others to return to killing the creatures as they swarmed.
Kira made a point of hovering above him, so her dust sprinkled his head. She watched as he held as still as possible, his long ears twitching at the sound of gunfire mixed with hungry moans.
Then he was gone.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Corvin fell away from the dream, losing and gaining consciousness at the same time until the electronic hum of his rig and the sound of people moving around him filled his no-longer-furry ears.
Bastian pushed up his headpiece and pulled himself from the rig while a man in green scrubs tried to stop him from getting up too fast. His head spun, still groggy from the dream. He called to anyone who would listen to get Alastair, then corrected himself by asking for Milo. It was hard to get names straight sometimes.
He knew that, to him, he had only been inside the dream a moment ago, but since he had been unconscious for most of the logout process and taken time to wake up, it had been longer than it felt. He glanced at a clock at the corner of one of the monitors. Ten minutes had passed since he’d left. Ten minutes where his friends were still in there fighting to stay alive. Even with the mana vials he left behind, he wasn't sure if it was enough to keep everyone going. He looked around the room at their bodies restrained in their rigs. He hoped they were alright.
Bastian sat and waited as a tech sent an urgent message into the system to contact Milo, who was probably wondering why one of the party had logged out suddenly. After about ten more minutes, the man was awake and struggling to form a coherent sentence. As soon as Milo's words started to make sense, Bastian explained the situation and asked about the code that they needed.
Milo pressed his finger and thumb into his eyes as if forcing them to adjust to the light. "Wait, what code? What exactly did it say?"
Bastian repeated the text as close as he could, not having seen it himself. He hoped he had it right, remembering how things could change when passed along between people, especially when one was a sarcastic fairy. "It said, that it would open for whoever had a code and that the cold-blooded would have the key."
