Devon shrieked and licked the air with a forked tongue, swiping a claw through the empty space before her like an angry animal.
There’s a reason for this. You—we—must journey to find Owen.
She shook her head to dispel these foreign thoughts and stomped toward the new opening where the wall had crumbled. As she stepped into the sunlight, its harsh glare painful to her eyes and flesh, she cast another Demonic Frenzy, stacking the spell to double its effect.
As the haste took hold, she sensed something else. New capabilities that had been unavailable to her previous incarnation. Flamestrike. Phoenix Fire. Simulacrum and Ventriloquism. Fade. Freeze.
“Have you blessed me, master?” she asked, trembling with ecstasy at the thought that she might have gained so much favor.
/You have done nothing—nothing—to gain my blessing. You disgust me, worm. Your weakness brings shame upon me./
Devon shrieked as physical pain answered her god’s rejection.
/But you may redeem yourself with blood. You may once again take your place in council with my generals. You may once again lead one of my armies. But only if you prove yourself./
“Devon!” The voice came from behind her, a deep human shout.
Devon! echoed the presence inside her mind. Take control. Before it’s too late.
Lips drawn back from her fangs, Devon turned. Where before, the chamber had been empty save for the dead, the mortally wounded, and the shimmering forms of beings who seemed out of phase with the physical realm, now a man stood in a beam of light that lanced through the remnants of the ceiling. The collapse seemed to have stopped, leaving a cathedral-like interior where heavenly glow pierced the space in dozens of parallel beams.
The man’s armor shone painfully bright, sending lancing pain into her eyes.
Devon wailed at the sight. Every instinct commanded her to crush the mortal who dared stand before her.
Yet she couldn’t. Body tense as the ropes on a torturer’s rack, she stood frozen.
Yes! Fight.
“I don’t know what you’re experiencing, and I can only imagine how difficult it is to resist.” The man—Torald, said the voice in her head—took a step toward her. He raised a hand in her direction, a halo of white light surrounding his arm.
Ever so slowly, a tendril of the glow stretched toward her.
Devon shrieked, her Frenzy tearing at her spirit, demanding she rend him limb from limb. But she couldn’t move. Something inside her resisted.
The light touched her, and she remembered. Owen. She must journey to find him, gain his confidence, and somehow get him back from the demon he’d become.
All while avoiding becoming a demon herself.
Torald stepped closer, and she shook her head. Not now. If he came too close, she would not be able to resist bleeding him. Raking talons across his flesh just to hear him scream.
“No.”
He seemed to understand and halted his advance. Still, the light drifted from his hand to touch her and flow into her body. Where Veia’s presence touched her, her body ached. Bone-deep pain that brought a whimper from her throat.
“Remember your purpose,” Torald said softly. “You said you needed to enter the demonic plane.”
Yes. To find Owen. But how?
Reacting to her thought, Devon’s demon-self tore at her mind. It was almost as if the evil being meant to distract her. But from what?
Trembling with the effort to maintain control, Devon searched her awareness of the demon’s knowledge. The effect was sickening, a nausea-inducing overlay of one mind upon the other. She’d long been amazed at how fully formed Veia’s creations were, their lives and histories and emotions as rich as any human’s.
Zaa was nearly as adept at forging souls. Only instead of childhood memories and lifelong aspirations, the demon he’d created in her mind knew only pain, hunger, and greed. Her history amounted to the overwhelming desire to please her god. Every action she’d taken, every creature she’d bled had been in service of her creator.
Touching minds with the demon, Devon knew evil. Already, she understood that she’d never be able to forget being touched by it.
“I see your struggle,” Torald said gently. “Devon. Remember. Rescue Owen and return to us.”
Owen. The journey.
She realized then what the demon was trying to hide from her. Devon opened her demonic abilities page and scanned the list of spells. There.
Ability: Planar Rift - Tier 1
You rend the very fabric of reality, opening a portal between the physical and demonic realms.
Cost: 520 Mana
Cooldown: 1 day
Again the demon thrashed, and Devon drew from the ache where Veia’s presence bolstered her resistance. She activated the ability, reaching into the ether and—with claws that felt like steel—sundered reality.
A gash opened in the earth before her.
Torald’s eyes went wide, his face pale, but he stood his ground.
Devon keened, terrified to step through the portal. Leaving the physical realm would mean detaching from the conduit Torald had formed between her and Veia. It would mean leaving Veia’s creation altogether.
How could she possibly hold onto her identity when she’d nearly lost herself while surrounded by the physical?
How could she not?
She knew enough about E-Squared’s plans to understand that Zaa’s connection to innocent players would only be severed once she retrieved Owen from his personal hell. And the dark god’s influence must be removed.
A glance at her character sheet showed her Shadowed stat pegged at 100%. No going back now.
The only way out was through.
With a wail, Devon stepped through the rift and into hell.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
EMERSON SAT UP straight and blinked his eyes. The shield of monitors that stood between him and the door wavered in his bleary vision. But he smiled. Now that had been a flow state.
He took a satisfied breath as he moved output windows around to best to showcase his accomplishment. The results of his scripts portrayed a picture—that is, if you had the expertise to understand the pattern—of a whole undiscovered world. Zaa’s world.
A week ago, he would have said it was impossible to decipher the world state created by Penelope’s general intelligence. The neural net was too many layers deep, and the values of the qubits in the quantum cores were, by nature, inscrutable.
Yet somehow, using only the network traffic passing between Zaa’s servers and the set of impacted players, he’d done it.
On the output windows, he saw armies on the move, each unit represented by a GUID, a long number known to be globally unique, and labeled with attributes that would delight a wartime tactician. Where conflicts flared between Zaa’s forces and the natives of Veia’s plane, Emerson had deciphered patterns that spoke of the tide of battle.
The temptation to take this information and feed it to Veia along with directives for marshaling her forces tingled in his mind. But Emerson resisted. No matter how brilliant he considered his analysis, he knew Veia’s intelligence was far superior. Interfering with her strategies would only undermine her efforts.
But Devon…he could help her. A few days ago, he’d believed it would all be up to her, that the journey to find Owen and any actions she took to remind him of his human identity would have to come from her imagination.
The latter would still be up to her. But thanks to his clutch effort, he could now guide her entrance into the demonic realm, crafting her entrance and giving her tools to spare her unnecessary searching.
He placed his hands on the back of his head, grinning as he leaned back.
“Would you like me to alter the allowable tilt angle of your chair?” mini-Veia asked over the speakers. “I am happy to do so, but I’ve also noticed that you have been sedentary for some time. It would be better for your health to rise and—”
He cut
the AI off with a slice of his hand. It had been so long since he fussed with the smart home instantiation—or in this case, smart office—that he’d nearly forgotten enabling it. Fortunately, even if the experiment hadn’t produced much in the way of results, he had trained the AI to recognize a flow state based on his posture, brain waves, and the movement of his eyes. It could’ve been a close thing… any interruption while he’d been reaching those critical insights might have caused his trance to collapse. He shook his head. Such were the burdens of genius.
“Wait, you’re still here?” Emerson jerked and sat up straight when he saw Bradley Williams in the doorway.
“You told me to do nothing besides getting Devon ready to go after the governor’s kid,” Emerson said a bit defensively. He felt the blush on his face from having been caught in such a self-congratulatory thought cycle. Fortunately, though, even with hardware directly implanted in his skull, there was no such thing as mind-reading.
Bradley nodded and gave a little hum from his throat as if thinking. “I hope you can tell me that we’re ready to execute the rescue. We haven’t heard anything from the Calhoun boy’s girlfriend, have we? I’d like to get some status updates on the Georgia situation.”
Somewhat guiltily, Emerson focused on the messaging app at the edge of his awareness. Before plunging into his code, he’d suppressed all notifications. She could have been trying to get in touch, and he’d have no idea.
“As soon as I get Devon set, I’ll get in contact with Cynthia,” he said.
“That’s his girlfriend, I take it?”
Emerson nodded. “As long as Owen is medically stable, I think the situation will keep for another couple days.”
Bradley gave him a hard stare. “Is that an assumption, or do you have reason to think the governor will delay his decision about whether to use the situation for political gain?”
“I… Well… I guess it’s an assumption. But you have to figure a change in his messaging will require preparing a large campaign apparatus. Big organizations can’t turn on a dime.”
Bradley raised an eyebrow. “Some would say it depends on the management philosophy. But that sort of discussion is something engineers typically disdain, so I can see how you might reach a simple conclusion.”
The CEO’s expression dared Emerson to argue. Fortunately, Bradley was probably right. To put it mildly, Emerson rarely gave a rat’s ass about how the executives made themselves feel busy.
“Anyway,” he said. “I’ve made good progress here. I have no doubt we can get Devon where she needs to be. In fact, she’s probably waiting on me, ready to flip the whole demon switch. I’d better get in touch.”
If Bradley was offended by the dismissal, he didn’t show it. With a nod, he checked the clock on his phone, then turned to face down the corridor. “I’ll look for an update late this evening,” he said. “Don’t refrain from messaging because you think I’ll be asleep. I doubt I’ll have that luxury until the situation is resolved. And speaking of contact, I assume you’re staying in town for the holiday?”
“Holiday?”
Bradley flicked him a glance. “Christmas is on Monday.”
Oh. Emerson swallowed. “No plans really. I guess it depends on where we are with this situation.”
Bradley nodded. “Well, keep me updated.” With that, he walked off.
Emerson returned his attention to the screens in front of him. The rifts near Eltera City would be good spots for entrance to the hell plane. From what he could tell, the geography of the demonic plane held little spatial resemblance to the physical. Entering near Eltera wouldn’t drop her right into Demonhome—she’d want a little time to get accustomed to the plane—but it would get her within an hour’s walk. Owen was in the demon capital now. With that knowledge—and the in-game tracker item he planned to create for Devon—she should have little trouble homing in on him.
He nodded to himself as he opened a messaging app. “Devon,” he typed. “I think I can offer more help than I originally imagined. I’m going to send a GM to you at Stonehaven. Wait there before you transform.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
You have discovered the Citadel of Smoke.
You gain 125000 experience.
Congratulations! You have reached level 22!
Haze filled the air from thousands of flames that burned in stone cages and on ledges jutting from the dark walls. Carved into the stone of the corridor, contorted figures were captured in writhing masses and individual torture. Swollen tongues protruded from screaming mouths. Eyes rolled, the whites somehow brighter despite being hewn from the same, oppressive stone.
The ceiling hung just inches from Devon’s head, its surface an intricate pattern of spikes and ridges. Smoke gathered in the recesses while swirling around the sharp points. The miasma thickened ahead of and behind her, hiding her view of the corridor in either direction.
When Devon made a tentative step forward, her hoof clicked against the hard floor. A puff of flame licked up from the point of contact, sending a whiff of brimstone to her nostrils.
“Citadel of Smoke, huh. Okay. What now?”
As she squinted into the smoke, the acrid fumes stinging her nose, she unwittingly raised her wings. The upper joints caught on the rough spikes of the ceiling. She jerked away in surprise, stretching the membranous limbs by reflex, and her flesh slammed into the corridor walls. She started to panic, feeling as if the walls and ceiling were moving inward to crush her.
“Breathe, Dev.”
Smoky air entered her lungs and rushed back out. Her heart rate slowed. The claustrophobia, she realized, had more to do with her new body dimensions than the hallway’s size. The new limbs were foreign, yet part of her. Like an unwanted intrusion into her flesh. But she could master them. By force of will, she clamped the sheets of flesh and the skeleton supporting them tight against her back. To reassure herself, she turned one way and then the other, proving there was space to move.
“See. No Star Wars trash compactor scenario.”
As she took another breath, settling her mind so she could figure out what the hell to do, a dimly glowing orb sprang from one of the flame-filled wall sconces. It gave her nose a lackluster boop.
“The original Star Wars or the 2035 reboot?”
Devon scoffed. “Do you even have to ask? Reframing a story in virtual reality doesn’t make up for screwing up a cultural touchstone. And where did you hear about starborn movies, anyway?”
The wisp circled in the air. “Unlike most of the lowly creatures in the physical and demonic realms, arcane manifestations have our own libraries and knowledge bases. You must recall the association between arcane magic and scholarly pursuits. Pure, secular intellectualism. As the gods of the major planes struggled to form their own identities from the river of universal knowledge that passed through our reality, they neglected to beware the arcane portals that were carefully inserted into the flow to siphon information.”
Devon grimaced as she tried to follow the wisp’s description. “So you’re saying that when the developers seeded the AIs with the entertainment content, your arcane friends made a copy through a backdoor?”
Bob shrugged. “You have to admit it makes me a better guide. Knowing the cultural basis upon which you make your rather perplexing decisions helps me show patience.”
“You know, I was almost happy to see you. For a second or two.”
Bob booped her nose again, but like before, the gesture lacked its usual spunk. “Anyway. Interesting situation you’ve gotten yourself into here. Of your misadventures so far, I admit this is among the most worrisome.”
Devon sighed. “I don’t imagine you came to offer suggestions...”
All at once, a grating sound filled the corridor. Devon jumped, hoof clacks raising more bursts of flame, as the figures carved into the walls began to move. Bile rose in her throat as eyes swiveled to look at her and drops of dark liquid began to flow from gashes that had bee
n carved to resemble wounds. Mouths opened in silent screams. Or maybe…judging by the way her skin crawled, Devon had the feeling they weren’t entirely silent. Rather, the tortured wails were just outside her hearing.
That’s when she felt the heartbeats from the trapped figures. The sense of trapped vitality swashing through veins suspended in stone. She had the incredibly horrified feeling that what she’d thought were carvings were actually prisoners, locked into the very stone of the citadel.
She swallowed hard against her heaving stomach.
/And now, worm, we come to the place of judgment./
Under different circumstances, it might have been funny to see Bob zip to and fro, the wisp panicking at the god-awful discord in Zaa’s voice. But Devon was too busy shuddering under the nails-on-chalkboard screech while trying to fight her demon-desire to fall to her knees and grovel before the god.
As nice as it would have been to make some sarcastic remark about how Zaa had no power over her, she managed the compromise of remaining upright.
/Where is this place, the worm wonders. This place is either your home for eternity or your salvation. You failed me once, falling to pathetic fleas created by a feeble goddess. Your weakness brought defeat just as our forces broke the defenses and began tearing through the worthless human settlement on the way to Veia’s shrine. Today you will either redeem yourself by escaping the citadel, destroying anything that stands in your path, or you will fail and be condemned to the fate shared by the other prisoners here./
Zaa is offering you a quest: Escape the Citadel of Smoke.
Fight your way clear of these twisted halls to prove yourself worthy of a place at the head of Zaa’s armies.
Objective: Find a way out of the citadel, overcoming all the challenges presented.
Reward: Name change from ‘Worm’ to ‘Ezraxis Reborn.’
Citadel of Smoke: A LitRPG and GameLit Adventure (Stonehaven League Book 4) Page 23
