by Dante Steel
But then, suddenly, Smaug wasn’t fighting against Gary and Olivia anymore. He was using his wind just enough to make sure he wasn’t submerged into the volcano.
“Something’s not right,” Gary said.
“Why?” Nicoletta asked.
“He’s not fighting.”
“Maybe he’s given up,” Elena suggested.
Without opening his eyes since closing them allowed him to see telekinetically better, he turned his face toward her, grimacing.
“I didn’t say I thought he had,” she added. “There. That’s the last of the metal.”
“All right.” Nicoletta sounded determined. Fling me up next.”
“What in the hell?” Elena shouted. “That’s suicide!”
“Olivia will catch me. “Come on. I don’t want to rely on the heat of the volcano. I don’t want it to erupt. Hurry! We don’t have much time!”
Gary did open his eyes in time to see Elena grab Nicoletta, spin a few times, and then fling the Hispanic through the air.
“Olivia!” Nicoletta called.
Olivia shifted positions and snatched Nicoletta’s hand. The two dropped several feet before recovering. Already, Nicoletta was blasting the volcano with her fire. Not the volcano. The metal mass.
Gary closed his eyes again. “Move back,” he told Elena. “You’ve done your part.”
“I’m not leaving,” she said.
He heard a soft sand of metal on sand. He imagined she had dug her heels in. He shook his head. Stubborn. He both loved and hated that about her.
“What the hell is he doing?” Gary muttered. He couldn’t see Smaug as well now, even telekinetically.
Abruptly, he realized Olivia wasn’t trying to force Smaug to stay in place. She was trying to use her power to push the metal arch down closer toward Smaug, using that to pin him there.
Which was a good thing, only they hadn’t acquired as much metal as they should’ve. At the ends of the arch, they didn’t quite touch either side of the volcano. Smaug might be able to squeeze through and escape.
Not if Gary had anything to say about that.
He yanked hard on the one side of the metal mass, but the congealed mass wasn’t budging. No way he could.
“We have to lift it,” he shouted, but the wind swirling around him threw his words back at him. He wasn’t even sure if Elena could hear him, and she stood right next to him, a metal hand on the small of his back.
“We can do this,” she said, her lips directly touching his ears.
That wind, where was it coming from? He hadn’t felt anything like this before in all of his time in Vampire War.
Smaug. It had to be. He was using his wind outside of the volcano? Why? That made no damn sense!
Unless he wanted to distract and confuse. Fuck. Gary ignored the wind and tried to shove up the congealed metal mass, but Olivia was fighting him. He had no way to let her know what he was trying to do.
Could someone with telekinesis use that power to mentally talk to someone? Gary wasn’t sure, and he didn’t know how to besides, so he wasn’t about to waste his precious energy trying. He was already dying as it was. Not literally, of course, but it wasn’t easy to keep on going, to keep on pushing.
Sweat dripped down his face. It was so hot, so fucking hot. Nicoletta was blasting the metal. She didn’t need to, did she? She should stop, needed to stop, too hot.
Gary’s mind was foggy. He couldn’t think clearly.
Just then, the metal mass moved much easier. Olivia must’ve realized what he was trying to do! Either side scraped against a higher portion to the narrowing volcano dome, and Gary breathed easier. Yes! Things were back to plan!
“Something isn’t right,” Elena said.
He risked opening his eyes because of the measure of fear in her voice. Not much frightened Elena.
“What is it?” he asked, blinking, readjusting to looking through his eyes versus his mind’s eye.
She nodded toward the volcano. It was hard to see through sudden, thick fog.
“What is that from?” he asked.
“It’s getting colder,” she murmured.
It was. The temperature was dropping alarmingly.
“Hell’s frozen over,” he said grimly.
“How the hell can he do that?” Elena asked.
“Easy,” Gary said, once again cursing himself for his stupidity. “Think about it. As soon as we came here, our powers were augmented. You have more metal, Olivia can extend her flight to other people or objects. I can fly myself. Nicoletta can breathe fire like a badass.”
“It stands to reason that he’ll have something else to. Okay, fine, I get that, but ice? I didn’t know anyone had ice powers before! I mean, we did fight that supervillain with it, but as far as gamers, I thought it was just the four: fire, water, wind, and earth.”
“Yeah, but not many have more than one, right? He can use the fire in reverse, strip the heat away from the water to make ice maybe. Or maybe those with water from the first issue now have ice as their power increased. Fire can breathe it. Wind… fly maybe? Earth, hell if I know. Haven’t come in contact with that enough yet.”
Just then, the ground beneath their feet shook.
“Did you feel that quake?” Elena asked.
“Definitely a tremor and definitely not a chance thing.”
“He can’t have all four, can he?” Elena shrieked.
“Remember, he is a wizard. Maybe he’s never been limited to fire and wind, just wanted us to think that. He might have all kinds of spells in his pocket.” Gary grimaced. “We just don’t know what we’re up against, and we were such fools to go up against him.”
“It wasn’t the plan,” she reminded him.
“Yes, well, now we’re fucked.”
Gary’s mind was racing. Smaug was making the volcano turn to ice. He wasn’t going to die. He could smash through the entire volcano, cause it to shatter apart and be free. Their trap was going to fail.
Was there any way to salvage this?
“We need to draw the heat away from the congealed metal, break it apart. If we can shatter the metal into shards, we might be able to impale him with some,” Gary said.
“Or he’ll turn those shards against us,” Elena muttered darkly.
“True enough, but do you have any other idea?”
“No, so how do we go about it?”
“Do you have any weapons at all?” he asked.
She lifted her metal fists.
“I was hoping something with a metal point so you could chip away at the metal, but that might work. You’ll have to smash it.”
“So I have to climb up there. Whoa! Warn a girl first!”
“We don’t have time,” Gary said as he continued to lift Elena up inside the volcano. He dropped her onto the metal mass and hovered beside the other two girls. They both looked worse for wear.
“We need the metal to break apart,” Gary muttered. “We need to use it as weapons again, projectiles to pin him down.”
“I don’t think that’s gonna work,” Nicoletta said.
“Adding more heat to the metal will make it soft again, right?” Gary asked.
“It’s not working!” Elena shouted. The thud of her fist hammering against the metal mess rang out again and again.
“I can try,” Nicoletta said, “but all of that ice… the temperature’s dropped so much.”
Gary nodded. She would have to use a ton of her energy to manage this, and she was already getting depleted.
“How are you holding up?” he asked Olivia.
She stared at him, but it seemed more like she was seeing through him.
“I’m up,” Olivia said, but it almost sounded like a question.
Gary tried to feel for where exactly Smaug was beneath the mass of metal, but all he could sense was the metal and the frozen lava. Deeper, down below, was more of the hot lava, beneath the frozen, and that lava was churning, roiling, bubbling fighting against the ice. Pressure was buildin
g. Immense pressure.
“It’s gonna blow,” Gary realized. “Damn volcano.”
“Where’s Smaug?” Olivia asked, sounding more alert now.
“I don’t know. I thought you would have kept a better eye on him.”
“There’s kind of a chunk of metal blocking my view,” Olivia snapped.
“Don’t fight,” Nicoletta said.
“I can’t see through shit!” Olivia said. “Can’t you?”
“Somewhat. He’s gone. I…”
Was he in that hot lava? Was he the reason why the volcano was gonna blow?
“We have to figure out a way to stop the volcano from erupting,” Gary said.
“Because that’s gonna be easy,” Olivia muttered.
“Wait, what?” Elena cried. “If this place is gonna blow, I need to get the hell out of here!”
“Get her out of here,” Gary told Olivia. He grabbed onto Nicoletta to keep her flying with him.
Swiftly, Olivia seized Elena and flew them away from the volcano, hopefully far away.
Gary swallowed hard. “This isn’t going to be easy,” he said.
“You have a plan?” Nicoletta asked.
“The pressure of the ice against the lava is too much. It’s gonna explode.”
“Maybe if I melt the ice…”
“It might help, or it might make the volcano erupt that much faster. I don’t know. I’m not a volcano expert.”
“I know some about the weather but not volcanoes. I… I don’t know. The volcano exploding would be terrible.”
“Unless Smaug is somewhere in the lava.”
“You think he is?”
“I don’t see how he could survive being in it though.” Gary grimaced. “He has to be somewhere else. He can’t breathe lava. He’s a supervillain, and we’re in a game, but he’s not a lava monster. He needs air.”
“You worry about finding him,” Nicoletta said. “Drop me on the crest of the volcano. I’ll melt the ice as slowly as I can. Maybe that will help to cool things down. If it looks like it’s gonna blow, I’ll log off so I won’t die, okay?”
“You pull out the second it turns sour.”
Her face paled beneath her normal tone. “You think it will turn sour.”
“Knowing our luck? We can almost count on it.”
She nodded. “All right. Let’s do this.”
Gary brought her over to the side of the volcano. She peeked over the rim and gave him a thumbs up.
She was ready to do her part, and Gary had to do his. Smaug had to be found and the sooner the better. This had to end now. They might not get a second chance.
Chapter Twenty
The cool fog rolling from the volcano blanketed the place and made Gary’s eyes water. He blinked as he landed and glanced around, trying to get his bearings. Where were Olivia and Elena? He couldn’t see them, so hopefully, they were far enough away to be safe. Not that he figured they would stay away for long. Neither would abandon the fight to Gary and Nicoletta. They all were superheroes, regardless of what the game ranked them as. They were all fighters, and they wouldn’t turn their back on a battle.
Gary closed his eyes and focused on the volcano, on the part deeper beneath the surface. The earth was shifting, grinding together, allow more of the lava to creep upward from within the soil.
And there, a small patch of space where lava wasn’t. A cave of some kind. An underground tunnel system.
Smaug must have disappeared into one of them, but there were hundreds, maybe even thousands. Who knew where they all led. Who knew if they extended the entire length of the land mass. Maybe some would even bring him back to some of the underground towns.
Gary gritted his teeth. This was like finding a needle in a haystack, only this needle was deadly, poisonous, and ready to kill and kill again.
The fog grew thicker, and Gary’s lungs became tight. It was getting harder to breathe, but it seemed that the cooling of the ice might be enough to temper down the volcano. Maybe that was wistful thinking, but it might be going all right. That at least.
If we can stave off the volcano from erupting and get away with our lives intact, I guess we can call that a victory.
But that wasn’t what Gary wanted. He had to find Smaug. This madness had to end.
Leaving Nicoletta to handle the volcano, hopefully, Gary picked some of the tunnels and followed along them, trying to determine any sign of Smaug. It wasn’t any easier to telekinetically search them than it would’ve been to do so physically. He felt the war of the heat and the cold, and his body didn’t seem to know if he should be sweating or shivering. Actually, he was doing both.
Everywhere he looked, he saw no signs of the supervillain. The volcano was back to rumbling again, or was it just the ground itself and the source wasn’t the volcano after all? Gary couldn’t be sure. Nothing was making sense.
He was so confused that he opened his eyes to see Elena and Olivia rushing over toward him.
“What did we miss?” Olivia asked, the faster of the two.
The ground rumbled and split open. Sand spewed everywhere, some lava too, and on top of the molten liquid geyser was none other than Smaug. Correction, Smaug and Elena as the precise location where he had torn the sand apart was where she had been standing.
Gary knew that wasn’t a coincidence.
“Put her down!” Gary shouted as he flew into the air, making a beeline for them.
Smaug burst out laughing and tossed down something glittering, something too small to be Elena.
Her arm. One of her arms.
Gary’s heart felt as if it had been ripped out of his chest. He gave a wild yell and plowed straight into Smaug. Elena went flying, but Gary was too busy punching and kicking and biting Smaug to care.
The supervillain was blocking every blow, and Gary’s teeth hardly penetrated. Abruptly, Smaug altered from defense to offense, and most of his attacks did land, but Gary didn’t care. He was going to make Smaug pay. He tried to use his powers to hold Smaug still even as they soared through the air, fighting parallel to the ground, but he couldn’t concentrate. Gary’s blind anger and need for revenge were preventing him from using his powers. Or maybe he was too spent to do more than fly. He couldn’t be sure.
Smaug captured a punch from Gary in his hand and twisted the wrist painfully. Gary let out a bellow. He jerked free, did a flip, and kicked Smaug underneath the chin. The supervillain turned to the side so the blow was only glancing, and Gary gritted his teeth. He wiped the side of his mouth. Blood. He was bleeding. He was spent. He couldn’t handle much more.
“You will die,” Smaug said. “I promise you that.”
“Not today,” Gary said.
“Fleeing like a coward. I don’t tend to allow people to do that to me…. Twice,” Smaug said.
“That’s not how I remember it,” Gary spat out. Blood and saliva flew out of his mouth.
“I suppose you wouldn’t. The mind can play tricks on one.”
Gary didn’t want to waste energy on words. He attacked the supervillain, pouring everything into each punch and kick, but each one had less and less power behind it. He was fading fast.
Smaug, though, seemed to have more than enough energy. In fact, his body was growing hot. The heat radiating from his body was making it impossible for Gary to fight him. Each punch made his fist feel like it was on fire.
If Gary didn’t do something soon, he was going to be the one to die. He hardly had any energy at this point, and unlike Nicoletta or Olivia, he couldn’t just cheat and quick log off the game.
Smaug didn’t know that though. If Gary could make it seem like he was giving up and logging off…
“Mommy’s calling, Gary said. “Dinner time. Gotta go.”
“Is she really calling you?” Smaug asked with a smirk. “Calling you from Heaven?”
Gary froze. What the fuck? How in the hell did Smaug know that? It was possible he was bluffing, just guessing, but Gary’s response alone had to be proof that
what he had said was accurate.
Without a word, Gary dove back down toward the sand. Just before he collapsed against the gritty surface, he pulled up, and he rushed forward. His body just wanted him to fall down, to curl up, to sleep, to not move for a week, but he pushed forward. He had a goal in mind, a place where he might feel refreshed.
But it was a place he didn’t want Smaug to know about. He was going to have to elude the supervillain before he reached it.
Gary swiveled this way and that, zigzagging. Smaug bore down on him, and sudden heat rained down on Gary. The fucker was throwing fireballs at him. Gary managed to avoid all of them, and he watched as the fireballs smacked against the sandy surface below.
How could this prick have such boundless energy? Would he never tire out?
Gary wasn’t about to find out. He needed to ditch the fucker and split ways.
Maybe… a swarm of vampires. Yes. It would give Smaug the chance to level up entirely too much, but at this point, Gary just had to survive.
Lifting his elevation, Gary tried to find a horde, but none were in sight. All he could see was that tall, creepy castle. Dark mountains rose in the distance behind it, and Gary altered course to head there now.
Smaug followed close behind, and Gary interwove between the mountains and valleys, coming close to the castle. A heavy, oppressive aura of evil, almost a presence, weighed Gary down to the point that he could hardly fly. The main big bad of Vampire War must be contained within the castle.
Not caring about Smaug anymore, Gary struggled to fly away. He could hardly see where he was going at this point. He was so out of it, so ready to just stop, stop playing, stop breathing, stop living, but he managed. Somehow, someway, he managed. He reached the lost ocean and sank into the waters.
The mermaid lifted Gary to the surface before he could drown, but he felt only a little rejuvenated. His body had been pushed beyond the limit for too long.
Just then, a loud explosion rang out. The volcano?
