“Let them come,” shrugged Denny Lorien. “Look, our mages are coming. They’ll help us out if we have problems with them.”
Three mages walked over to our group.
“All right,” said one named Kart, who was obviously the senior of the three. “We’ll heal you, and we can support with fire if need be. Two of you should cover us, though, so take charge, Lorien.”
“Okay, Hewitt, Connel, you protect the mages like you’re keeping the neighbor off your wife. Oh, here comes our first little flight of birds.”
He pointed to the left, where a group of warriors was rounding the hill. There were about eight or nine of them, and they were sprinting toward the river.
“Here they come, kiddies. Hold the line!” barked Denny.
I took up position on the left flank and watched as they came closer. They didn’t look that great—their chainmail was hacked and sliced, some were holding wounds, and others were limping. None of them was very high level.
“Forward!” ordered Lorien. “What are we waiting for? We can take these guys out in no time.”
We ran out to meet our attackers. Steel clashed against steel. I whaled away at some poor soul who was hiding behind his shield, sending him flying to the ground. There was no need to go after him from the looks of things, and so I caught someone else’s sword with my own, shoved him backward, and thrust straight through his chest. His chainmail parted as my blade cut through it.
“Well, that’s that,” grunted a swordsman next to me by the name of Montag, swinging his sword in a circle.
Cocoons lay at our feet, marking the place where our enemies had fallen.
“Like taking candy from a baby,” he chuckled.
“Yeah, right,” said another warrior named Veselchak. “Have you tried actually doing that? Go try to get some candy from my little sister. That I would love to watch.”
“Well, that depends on how old your sister is…” grinned Monteg.
“What are you relaxing for? Now’s not the time.” Lorien’s voice rang out. “Here come more of them.”
We spent the next hour and a half wiping out groups of Chaos Rider warriors we caught retreating from the field of battle. I hacked away with my sword, trying as I did to figure one thing out—what was I doing there? This isn’t my war. Oh, and another thing—how was Snakeville destroyed? I knew I’d been told just recently. So why can’t I remember?
Our twelve-man force shrank to seven, and one of our mages was killed, as well. Their last group had pretty high-level players with mages to back them up. Things must have been going very poorly for them if even their veterans were turning tail and running.
The crash of battle heard from the other side of the hill had almost ceased.
“Well, that’s it,” said Lorien with satisfaction. “It looks like victory is ours.”
“Why were we even fighting in the first place?” I asked, no longer worried in the least that a question like that could blow my cover. The constant skirmishes had me exhausted to the point that I didn’t care anymore.
Lorien looked at me and shook his head. “You’re crazy, my pale friend. In Faymort, their mage leader told ours to go screw himself. One thing led to another, and here we are.”
“Why didn’t they just settle it themselves? What’s the point of all this slaughter?”
“You seriously need to drink less.” Lorien couldn’t believe his ears. “What’s with all the stupid questions? Wait, what is that?”
Someone appeared at the top of the hill. Judging by the staff in his hand and the enormous beard blowing in the wind, it was a mage.
“Oh, boy,” said Kart, who came over to Lorien and me with wide-open eyes. “That’s Magnor himself. I wonder what he has up his sleeve.”
Magnor started bellowing a spell and whirling his staff around. An ethereal bubble wrapped itself around him, while the water in the river behind us began to ripple. The wind whipped up, throwing sand in our faces.
“You old fool!” screamed Kart, as if Magnor could hear him. “You’re really going to do this? Die and take us all with you?”
“What’s he doing?” I asked Kart, but he just waved me away.
“He’s going to drown us all,” the second mage, Eidor, said worriedly, rubbing his hands together and massaging his wrists.
“Maybe, we can kill him? Shoot something at him—let him have it!” Veselchak shook Eidor.
“You think that will help?” Eidor yelled back. “Look at the shield he has around him! He cast his life into it—it’s self-destruction.”
Drown us, drown us, I repeated to myself. Suddenly some kind of switch flipped in my head. Of course! Krolina told me a mage used a spell…what’s it called? Oh, right, Universal Flood. She said he washed the whole village into the river. The whole village.
Barefooted Marika and her doll flashed before my eyes.
“Damn it!” I roared. “I sent her to her grave!”
“Who?” asked Lorien, shouting to make himself heard over the wind.
“That little girl, the one I was talking to in the village!”
“Who cares about her?” yelled Lorien. “She’s just an NPC. Think about us; we’re screwed!”
The mage at the top of the hill twirled his staff faster and faster as if stirring something at a speed no human could even dream of. Before long, it was impossible to make out his movements. Above him, an enormous vortex gathered and was starting to suck in the birds flying by—mostly crows. The sky above Snakeville was blanketed in menacingly black and blue clouds, out of which fiery lightning flashed downward.
“All right, we only have a few minutes until all hell breaks loose, though this won’t be a fiery hell; it’ll be water. If you want to live, make for the other bank of the river,” said Kart crisply to everyone. He dove into the river. He surfaced, turned, and gave us one more piece of advice. “You have five minutes. Tops.”
Everyone dashed toward the water.
“Winkle, what are you waiting for?” Lorien yelled at me. “Let’s go!”
My instinct for self-preservation kicked in. Save yourself! Who knows what will happen if you die in someone else’s account? You could be stuck in the game forever.
Screw that. I sprinted up the hill toward the town.
I turned my head to look at the mage as I ran past. Through his protective cocoon, I could see that he had no pupils in his eyes; instead, there pulsed a furious fire as bright and golden as the sun. He had stopped spinning his staff and was standing there with his arms raised toward the heavens. It was something more than just blackness covering the sky. Not a single speck of light could penetrate the gloom.
The first drops splashed down as I ran up to the small house Marika had gone into. I flew inside, realizing that time was almost up.
“Marika! Marika!” I bellowed. “It’s Winkle, we were talking earlier. We have to go! Where are you?”
I heard the girl’s voice coming from behind me. “Mom, it’s the warrior I told you about!”
Whirling around, I saw her coming up from under some kind of cover that was apparently the entrance to their cellar. She was still holding her ragdoll in her hand.
“Hurry! Hurry!” I said with as much calm as I could muster. “We have to go! There’s a flood coming!”
“A flood?” A slender woman, obviously Marika’s mother, climbed up out of the cellar. “What flood?”
“A wet one, damn it!” I barked. “There’s no time!”
“But we have to get some things together.” The woman gestured around the room. “Put some things in a—”
She didn’t finish. Water crashed into the building, instantly sweeping her away along with the roof and part of the wall.
I was able to jump forward, grab hold of Marika, and press myself against the remainder of the wall. I tried not to think about what happened to her brother in the cellar.
“Mommy!” the girl screamed.
Through cracks in the walls, I could see powerful currents sucking everything into the
river—people, both living and dead, along with remnants of houses and trees.
“What happened to Mommy?” Marika shook me.
“She’ll be okay,” I said, doing my best to reassure her. “She can swim. Look at all the people swimmi—”
Another wall of water hit the building. I wasn’t strong enough to withstand it that time, though I kept hold of Marika. First, we were swept around a whirlpool, after which, the flow of water sent us flying down the hill toward the river with unbelievable and growing speed. Marika’s hand remained firmly within my grasp, but I couldn’t even see if she was okay.
Getting washed down the hill was like going down a massive waterslide. My hope was to hang on until we joined the river, wait for the water pressure to subside, and swim to the other side with the girl. But my hopes were in vain. I don’t know if it was the incredible amount of water gushing into it or if it was the effect of the spell, but the river was no longer gentle and quiet. Its turbulence threw us between the whirlpools forming where the water from the village met the flow of the river, and we were thrust deep underwater. I fought to keep Marika’s hand from slipping out of mine, and I would have succeeded if she hadn’t let go of me first. As soon as I felt that her hand was gone, I opened my eyes—I always keep them shut underwater. Out of the corner of one eye, I caught a glimpse of a tiny figure holding her doll in one hand and reaching out to me with the other. Her face was full of hope, and I could tell that she believed in me and the fact that life simply could not end so abruptly. A second later, she was gone forever.
My head broke above the water, and I looked around to see a fearsome and awful picture—the deluge of water carrying people down toward the river; the mage, frozen where he stood atop the hill; the black sky; and a tree heading straight in my direction.
It crashed into me, and everything went dark.
“A-a-ah!” I came to sitting in the dirt on the road. Quiet night reigned around me. Streaks of light were starting to make their way across the eastern sky, announcing that morning was coming. I patted myself—whole and in one piece. I pulled up the interface—definitely me. A minute longer sitting there, and I started to realize what I’d lived through. Everything rushed back and tore through me.
“Are you kidding me?” I screamed, jumping up and shaking my fist at the sky. “Do you even think about what you’re doing? You’ll drive someone crazy like that!”
The shutter on the building next to me creaked, and in that sound, I heard a malicious, raspy laughter. The wind suddenly kicked up, blowing dirt into my face before it whistled around in the house. Something blew out and twisted around my legs. I bent over to see a rag doll with button eyes.
Have you ever noticed how sincere children are in their emotions? Their sadness is endless, their happiness immeasurable, their laughter uncontrollable. And their fear is boundless. I hadn’t felt the kind of boundless fear I felt that night in Snakeville since I was a child. I realized that it was somehow programmed into me, but that didn’t change a thing. Oh, how I ran.
I dashed headlong down the hill, swam across the river (if it hadn’t been for the fear, I don’t think I would have even gone near it), and hurtled three miles across the fields until finally collapsing against a lonely tree. It was only then that I looked back in the direction of the cursed village.
It looked perfectly harmless and even romantic, its buildings bathed in the light of the moon.
“You can all go to hell,” I hissed. “I’m never going anywhere near there again.”
That’s when I realized why people stopped playing—it was no longer a game. Death was too close, and the worst part was that it wasn’t even your own death.
I also realized why nobody said anything about what they’d seen. Telling the story would mean reliving the whole thing. And I had no intention of ever reliving the feeling I had when Marika slipped out of my hand.
The sky lightened, and dawn was close—a dawn that would mark the end of the most terrible night of my life.
Chapter Ten
A short one in which the hero first gets to Montrig and then decides to stay there for a bit.
I didn’t have the emotional or physical strength to take another step. The game and the rest of the world could wait. I logged out, crawled to my bed, and collapsed on top of it.
In what was fast becoming a tradition, my phone rang and woke me up. Honestly, though, waking up to the trill of my ringtone every morning was getting old.
“Hello?” I dragged myself out of slumber, guessing as I did who could be trying to get under my skin on a Sunday. Ah-ha, I should I have known.
“Nikiforov, are you still sleeping? It’s noon!” her annoyed voice said through the line.
“Yes, El, I’m sleeping,” I said forcedly. “At noon. Can you imagine?”
“Well, get up and get ready, we’re going to have some shashlik[9] with the Catanyans.”
I felt something inside me snap for the second time that day (if you can count what happened in the game).
“Why?”
“What do you mean, why?” asked Elvira in surprise. She hadn’t expected any pushback. My job was unquestioning obedience, or, at least, that’s what she’d always assumed.
“Why should I go have shashlik with the Catanyans?” I said angrily. “I don’t want to go have shashlik with the Catanyans. I don’t even know who the Catanyans are! You know them, so you go have fun with them. Just without me. Good riddance.”
“Excuse me?” Elvira couldn’t believe her ears.
“What’s there to understand? That I don’t want to go anywhere? Or why I don’t want to go anywhere? I’m not sure why I always have to go where you have to go, and why we always go where you want to go. Why don’t you ever ask, just for the fun of it, where I’d like to go?”
“Somebody got up on the wrong side of the bed,” said Elvira thoughtfully. “We’ll have a talk later. A serious one.”
She hung up the phone. Thank God. You can get too much of a good thing, especially if that good thing is the Mongol yoke. My three hundred years, it appeared, were drawing to a close.
Feeling the part of Dmitry Donskoy,[10] I went to have breakfast. Or was it lunch?
I was just finishing up some delicious, if less-than-healthy pasta with cheese and ham, when the phone rang again. The screen told me it was Willie calling.
“Hey there, bro,” I said through a mouthful of food. “Great to hear from you.”
“Hey,” answered Willie. “Are you eating?”
“Yeah, pasta.”
“With a meat patty?” he asked, all business. When it came to food, Willie was always in charge.
“No, with ham,” I said, sighing. “If I had meat, I wouldn’t have made pasta.”
“Wait a second,” said Willie. “The only thing better than meat and pasta is meat and mashed potatoes. And a pickle. You know, sliced into circles, not long-ways…”
“And green peas? With some grated cheese on top?”
We carried on for another three minutes before Fat Willie coughed.
“This guy came up to me in the game and asked me not to say anything about you. He bribed me pretty nicely, too—quite the interesting character.”
“A dungeon? Did you get much from it?” I asked with interest.
“Quite a bit,” said Willie openly. “More than usual. Much more.”
“That’s great,” I said. “Nice for you.”
“Sure, it’s nice for me,” continued Willie thoughtfully. “But I wanted to tell you something else—be careful. He was from the game admin, and they aren’t just serious people—they’re incredibly serious. Don’t bite off more than you can chew.”
“I’ll do my best,” I promised sincerely. “We’ll see what happens. The main thing is for you to forget what I do for a living.”
“Consider it forgotten,” Willie assured me. “Should I send you money?”
I wasn’t sure what he meant. “What money?”
“Game money,” grunted W
illie. “For the dungeon. You got it for us one way or another.”
Money is always nice, but I had no idea who their clan accountant was. And it seemed too petty to take money from him, regardless.
“No, my man, don’t worry about it,” I answered lightly. “You paid me for the publicity, and everything else is yours to keep. I mean, for your clan.”
“All right, then I’ll see you. If you need anything, call me or send me a message in-game.” Willie hung up the phone.
Full, feeling better, and starting to get over the turmoil of the night before, as well as the day’s blitzkrieg, I plopped down on the couch and looked at the capsule. Time for more adventures? Or maybe I need a break. I thought for a little while and then decided to get to Montrig and see from there.
I found myself next to the birch I’d gotten to the day before. It was completely, absolutely average. And it was the only one in the area, from what I could tell. I looked around to see that a steppe stretched far off toward the horizon, and only there, could I see the shadow of a forest. That must be the beginning of Foim Plateau, the one Romuil told me about when we were in Fladridge. Or, it may have just been a regular forest. Either way, the road I needed bent much farther toward the right, and it looked like I would need a good five hours at least. I got up and looked behind me once more. There was Snakeville, looking as innocent as ever in the daylight—just a bunch of ruins. I shivered, spat, and once more promised to never ever go that way again. My path led eastward.
My walk along the plain was a stark contrast to the previous day’s trek through the forest. The sun wasn’t too hot, the steppe was as even as a table, and flocks of birds flew to and fro overhead. They could have been larks, but I know very little about birds and bird songs. Two hours later, I did have to get wet, as the road crossed another river. I figured both it and the one by Snakeville were tributaries flowing into the Crisna.
Just as I’d noticed the day before, I didn’t have any bots hounding me. I found that strange—that much open space and not a single thing coming to attack me? I mean, I wasn’t complaining; I needed to find a headstone before I went off looking for adventures. But I was used to a life of action, and the lull was a bit unsettling.
The Road East (Epic LitRPG Adventure - Book 2) (Fayroll) Page 12
