The Destroying Plague

by Dan Sugralinov

  “Toby, this offer is available for ten seconds. We’re going to kill you anyway, only on top of that, you won’t get anything in real life either. You can forget about a career in Modus too. I don’t want to brag, but you must know what we can offer…”

  “Are you the ones that hired those inwinovas that wanted to kidnap me?” Crag interrupted him, raising his head.

  “We don’t work so crudely, kid. That was one of the losers who aren’t here. Finish the registration! The time has come…”

  I made my decision. I messaged Crag, told him to agree with all the conditions, that we had it all under control. Then, yet again thanking the game designers for the abundance of columns in the hall, I dropped to the floor behind the nearest and switched back to my true form.

  “Hey, Yary!” I shouted loudly, emerging into full view. “Remember me?”

  The preventers reacted instantly. I heard the ringing of weapons materializing, the flashes of spells preparing.

  “Who the hell are you?” the gnome Niu Lu said, the first to collect himself. “A noob? That way!”

  He pointed at the scribe desks beyond the perimeter. Fortunately, Banger wasn’t there to recognize me. A gnome from the Azure Dragons moved toward me, but Yary stopped him, putting a hand on his shoulder and addressing me.

  “Remind me… Where do I know you from?”

  “The Junior Arena. Our team won the final, and you asked me to get in touch with you after I left the sandbox.”

  “I said that?” Yary asked in surprise.

  Well, that made sense. For him, that was just a short episode from three months ago, after which I’d made no effort to be remembered, for obvious reasons. I knew his real age — well over forty — but the character, a Bogatyr-class human, looked fifteen years younger. Unlike many, Yary had kept his appearance.

  “Yes. Apart from you there were Glyph from the Azures, Yagami from Mizaki and some other top player…”

  “Some other top player!” Rayman grumbled, a human paladin at level three hundred and forty-seven. The same one I’d transformed into on my way to the scribe. “Get rid of him, we don’t need him!”

  Yary didn’t like that. I don’t know what his relationship was with Rayman, or with the Azures in general, the leading clan of the Asian cluster, but the right-hand of Modus answered defiantly.

  “No, let him stay.” He took a step and shook my hand. “Sorry I didn’t remember you right away, Scyth. Stay close. You have potential, but Hinterleaf has the final say. I’ll set you up a meeting…”

  He turned to Crag, but before continuing to pressure him, he turned back to me again.

  “You ever seen a Threat being taken care of? Now’s your chance.” Yary glanced at Tobias. “Isn’t that so, kid? Come on, Toby, don’t drag this out.”

  I joined the group pressing Crag against the desk. He quickly turned around to glance at me, and I blinked fast. Taking a deep breath, Tobias confirmed the registration sheet. Thank the Sleepers, he hadn’t forgotten to hide his allegiance to the Awoken, otherwise it would have all ended there.

  “Welcome to Darant, Crag!” the scribe bellowed as if nothing was amiss. “Next!”

  We left the town hall in a long procession. The crackling sound of preventers teleporting in continued in the square. Ordinary players were coming in too, but they were immediately escorted off the square. They complained, of course, but quickly calmed down when they got a coin or two. The preventers had to be given their due — they spared no expense in smoothing out public opinion. I remembered too well what a whole gold piece meant to a noob.

  It seemed Yary had completely forgotten about me, but when he saw the minotaur — and clan leader of the Azure Dragons — Glyph appear and pay attention to me, he called me over and told me to stay close.

  But then everything got messy. Since it wasn’t possible to harm Crag in the heart of the capital, the preventers had planned in advance to perform the Threat-banishment ritual in neutral territory. After all, their alliance included not only Commonwealth clans, but also clans of the enemy Dark Empire. However, the precise location of the ritual was kept secret, and the leader of Modus, Hinterleaf, was preparing to open the portal there personally.

  The royal guard cordoned off the square in front of the town hall. Apparently, based on the danger of the Threat, the authorities were working together with the preventers, creating as favorable a situation as possible for them.

  The top players started summoning flying mutants, and one after the other they launched up beneath the clouds.

  “Koba, take this guy with you,” Yary said, turning to me. “Scyth, fly with him.”

  “Can you find space for two more? A couple of guys from my team are here too, but they got turned away.”

  Yary weighed something up mentally, then nodded.

  “Alright. Tell me their nicknames, I’ll give the order to let them through. They’ll have to be quick though.”

  I watched my friends appear from thirty feet up, sitting behind Koba on his Golden Gryphon. Crawler ended up on a Battle Hippogryph with a beautiful elvish woman in the saddle. Bomb was less lucky. He found himself on the tail of a long, sinuous Flying Snake, which regularly threw him up and down in flight. It looked like the snake’s rider was spurring the mount on and laughing, and that Bomber, somehow staying on by grabbing onto the saddle by his teeth and all his limbs, was a fine example of striving to survive at any cost.

  * * *

  None of us were able to grab Crag with Depths Teleportation in flight; the mounts were spread out too far apart. Even at the gorge where the banishing ritual was meant to take place, he was too far away, surrounded by high-level players. He was immobilized with a few control spells, and three battle ‘stars’ from Modus, the Azure Dragons and Excommunicado guarded him. Two leaders of the Children of Kratos also joined them.

  A minute after we arrived, warriors from the other members of the Alliance started pouring out of portals, including neutrals and the Empire. I immediately recognized the mighty orc Horvac, the clan leader of the Travelers. His clan was the strongest among the dark factions, and he himself was so renowned for his eccentricity in real life that he never left the gossip column. Horvac, Glyph from the Azure Dragons, Colonel from Excommunicado and, of course, the head of Modus, Hinterleaf — these were probably the strongest players in the world. The Solo Adventurer Dek might have been catching up in levels, but in strength, opportunity and influence, he was no match. The very strongest was still the former Modus member Mogwai, the druid animalist. That player, after reaching the Resilience cap, declared that he was tired of Dis and had decided to take a year off.

  The gorge we flew into wasn’t far from Darant, close to one of the Battlefields. It was getting dark, but the sheer mass of magic all around meant we could see as clear as day.

  Officially, these lands belonged to the Commonwealth, but that was no barrier to representatives of other factions showing up there with impunity. Of course, outsiders would be subject to attacks from NPCs[1] in any territory, and if the level allowed it, then from players too. Global PvP was encouraged, and not only with the chance of equipment dropping from defeated opponents (even bags with one-hundred percent protection against losses were no guarantee), but also with Marks of the Valorous and Honor Points. The Commonwealth considered hostile even neutrals who belonged to neither of the strongest factions in Dis: the Commonwealth and the Empire.

  And now the gorge was packed with top players from the Alliance of Preventers, which included ten clans: four from the Commonwealth, four from the Empire and two from the neutrals.

  The best of the best from billions of players swarmed, gleaming with auras and buffs. Their mounts and battle pets roared, shrieked, growled, chittered. Giant spiders and praying mantises, dragons and lizards, bears and walking trees, phoenixes and dire wolves, hellhounds, elementals, demons, succubi, golems, rattling gnomish tanks and gyrocopters…

  Someone summoned a fifty-foot tall Bronze Colossus, and someone
else responded with a Tree of Life just as large. The mass of people shrank back from the giants, and Crawler and I were pressed against the walls of the gorge. Bomber had been swept off to the side, where he was talking animatedly in Chinese to a girl from Azure Dragons.

  Thirty paces from me, the leaders of the Alliance argued bitterly — something was wrong. Thanks to the strange acoustics of the gorge, I could hear them just fine.

  “I demand that any superfluous troops be withdrawn immediately!” Horvac shouted.

  “You say that after bringing your own here?” the gray-haired miniature gnome Hinterleaf answered harshly. He rolled his Rs, giving away his Russian roots. “Where is the logic? We have a saying for this where I am from — a guilty mind betrays itself!”

  “The dark ones are definitely planning something!” Glyph declared. “And the neutrals along with them!”

  The Colonel, a mighty goliath[2], gave some hushed commands to his officers. Another portal opened a few seconds later and Excos streamed out of it, no fewer than ten stars. Seeing this, the others activated too. Within a few minutes, the concentration of high-level players per square foot in the gorge broke the record for the entire history of Disgardium.

  “Yes, Horvac, the allies are right,” Yary said quietly, but I and all the others heard him just fine. Moreover, when he fell silent, so did the others. “We’ve been guarding the Threat, and that’s why we brought more than the agreed number of stars with us. But our people were meant to leave the gorge as soon as…”

  I got distracted before I could hear more. The familiar voice of the lopher Banger made me sweat.

  “Tierz, look who I found!” Banger rumbled, pushing his way through to me. “I was wonderin’ where he got to!”

  Frowning, Hinterleaf clicked his fingers and all the leaders were covered in a shield of a nature I didn’t recognize.

  “Distract him,” I whispered to Crawler, pointing out Banger with a glance. “They wanted to check me, but I slipped away.”

  I’d need to walk thirty paces to get close enough to catch Crag in my teleportation. I started trying to get closer to him.

  Bomber wrote that all the arriving troops of the preventers were buffing each other and forming battle parties, and not by faction, but by clan. A storm was brewing.

  The pressure beneath the dome grew as well. Yary and Hinterleaf stood back to back. Glyph was telling them something while the neutral clan leaders whispered with Horvac and the heads of the other dark clans. The same was happening around Crag: five Modus members closed ranks with some Dragons, Excos and Kratos, defending the Threat from the rest.

  This is our chance! I wrote to the group. Let’s push through to Crag. Whoever makes it leaves with him.

  The atmosphere of mutual distrust was rising to a point of no return. Accusations flew back and forth, and any spark could light the fuse.

  And then the spark came.

  “Scyth! Stop!” Banger shouted from somewhere behind.

  I’m not sure exactly what the trigger was. I guess it was his attack. In a fantastic display of his somewhat poor intellect, the lopher threw a magic bolus toward me, thereby igniting what might be the most chaotic slaughter in the history of Disgardium. My legs were entangled with spells, but Liberation cleared them. I rushed forward, changed my voice and boomed out:

  “We’ve been betrayed!”

  The trick worked. The rank and file troops behind me cast defensive auras and magic shields around themselves; flasks of battle elixir popped open all over the hall, flaming blades hissed, battle staffs crackled with energy. A veil of fire covered me — Crawler’s Fire Shield. I felt great regret in that moment that I hadn’t had time to hand in my quest and get Behemoth’s rewards. Not only that, but I hadn’t activated the crystal I got from Big Po, the eliminated Threat! Whatever happened, that would have come in handy!

  I summoned my pet, the Swamp Needler Iggy, and ordered him to stay close. Banger’s attack actually worked in our favor — the stats of all the group members flew up, multiplied by seventeen. My pet was no exception. I’d already gone through this during the outbreak of the Destroying Plague, when Crag, Infect, Tissa and I cleansed the streets of Tristad of the undead, so I wasn’t surprised when I grew, became stronger, felt my shoulders broaden and energy boil within me.

  Without getting caught up in the fight, I kept pushing my way toward Crag until I hit the impenetrable barrier of the dome. I was still too far from my clanmate. Judging by the minimap, Crawler and Bomber were far behind me.

  Hinterleaf shouted something beneath the dome in the meantime, calming his allies down with gestures. Yary stood behind him, Glyph and the Colonel stood at either side. Two Children of Kratos pressed against the wall of the dome. They were a strong clan, but their leaders were known for their entirely non-combative talents.

  It seemed Hinterleaf’s entreaties had no effect. Horvac shouted something, and a cloud of toxic yellow smoke filled the dome. Fire and lightning flashed within it, and a few seconds later Hinterleaf’s magic dome broke with a crystalline ringing, flying apart in a barely visible shower of glass, injuring those nearby. A fair share hit me; sharp shards pierced my chest and shoulders. I had to pull them out, tearing my flesh.

  “Plan B!” Yary shouted into his signal amulet. His voice boomed throughout the gorge. “Plan B!”

  Hinterleaf, an illusion mage, created ten copies of himself and left them to help, while he himself blinked to a small cliff above us and raised his arm, baring his teeth in a sinister grin. He held a black scroll in his hand.

  Everyone started fighting, but all with the same goal — Crag. All present wanted to kill and eliminate him as a Threat, and they no longer cared about the Alliance or clan leadership. The victors would write the story.

  The aftereffects of mass spells flooded every inch of the gorge. The ground beneath my feet shifted, turning into a mire. Venomous predatory plants grew from the rocky surface. The air burned with frost one moment, then melted armor the next. Ultrasonic waves from a tower summoned nearby tore off chunks of equipment and flesh, ripping space itself. One of the feet of the monstrous colossus crashed down mere yards from me, crushing several players at once. The snaking branches of the Tree of Life strangled everyone they could reach. A few different types of mist scorched my nostrils, throat and lungs, and I held on only thanks to Crag’s talent. The debuffs started stacking up perilously, but I only had another ten feet to go.

  In the fury of betrayal, everyone fired off everything they could against friend and foe alike. Expensive scrolls and last-chance weapons were spent in their dozens and hundreds. Nobody saved their ultimate abilities — top players died trying to take with them whoever they could.

  Gnomish tanks fired off cannons into the crowd. One of the shells flew into the melee around Crag, and the people there thinned out. Someone had placed an Invulnerability Bubble on Toby himself, and that saved his life.

  The light players around him had beaten back both the dark ones and the neutrals alongside Hinterleaf’s illusions, then started on each other.

  Yary used Charge to ram into the back of a former ally from Children of Kratos, waved his two-handed sword to cleave someone else in two, then shielded Crag with his body. A mage standing nearby opened a portal. With a dull squelch and its structure sparking with veins of blue and green light, the portal swallowed up Yary, Crag and the only Modus fighter still on his feet. The mage who opened the portal didn’t make it in, stunned by a rogue from behind, then exploding in a shower of blood.

  Hinterleaf, sure that his boys had escaped with the Threat, threw a couple of deadly area-of-effect spells into the crowd. But there was far worse to come.

  “Armageddon!” the Modus clan leader shouted.

  The black scroll in his hand crumbled into soot and dust and he disappeared from the cliff.

  The sky lit up with blinding light. As the meteor fell, its growing roar burst eardrums and shook brains. I cast Stone Skin and rushed toward the portal.


  At first Bomber got covered in the crumbly, rusty flakes of something poisonous and huge, and neither his increased defense nor his legendary ring helped him, because the colossus stamped on him immediately after. Crag’s boost disappeared as soon as they carried Toby through the portal.

  My view of the glimmering passageway disappeared upwards, and I suddenly fell flat on my face. Someone had cut off my legs with a poleaxe, slicing my life down to a few percent and leaving a Bleeding debuff. Hearing my heartbeat heavy in my ears, I crawled to the portal. Only my extremely high Resilience kept me hanging on. I don’t know what I was hoping for. I was too used to my undead curse, so I had no healing potions. And nowhere to put them anyway.

  There were about six feet left to crawl to the portal. I knew I was going to die. Didn’t have a clue where they’d revive me: I wasn’t bound to Darant, hadn’t really had time. And I doubted they’d return me to Tristad.