Amidst the oppressive heat of the air, the icy cold radiating off the blade felt like a draft of sweet water.
“What did you do?” Daniel asked in shock.
“I took back the fire.”
Daniel carefully tapped the rock-encased blade against the ground. When nothing seemed unusual, he raised the sword up and swung it down as hard as he could.
The rock around the sword shattered, leaving nothing but the naked blade.
“HOLY CRAHP!” Drogar roared.
The entire group cheered as Daniel slammed the sword against the rocks surrounding his boots. Within seconds he was knocking away fist-sized chunks. A minute later, he stepped out of the rocky knoll and onto regular ground.
He immediately went to work on the others’ stone bindings. Within ten minutes they were all free as well.
With the tiny creature’s help, Daniel pulled the others’ weapons out of the stalactites and smashed the last fragments of rock from the steel.
Lotan had to be supported by Drogar, he was so weak – but at least they were free.
Daniel turned to the creature. “Thank you – you saved our lives.”
The creature just looked up at him impassively without saying a word.
“What’s your name?” Daniel tried again.
“I am Siffis.”
“What are you, Siffis?”
“I bet it’s a salamander,” Vlisil interjected.
For the first time, the creature showed emotion.
“NO!” it roared indignantly.
The entire group stepped back in surprise.
“Not like the amphibian – I just meant an elemental fire being,” Vlisil said.
The thing pointed at him. “IGNIS!”
“Okay, okay,” Vlisil said hastily, putting his hands up like Stop!
“Are you an elemental fire being, Siffis?” Daniel asked. “Is that what an Ignis is?”
The creature nodded its head once as it stared reproachfully at Vlisil.
“Do you live here?”
“Live anywhere there is fire.”
A light bulb went on in Daniel’s head. “Is there a way out of here? Not just this cave, but out of Hell?”
“Of course,” the thing said, and scratched under its arm like they were having the most boring conversation in the world.
“Can you show us?”
111
Eric
It took him several hours of searching, copying, and pasting, but at the end Eric assembled a text file that had nearly ten times as many lines and commands as the Unnamed One’s original code. It was a monster, that was for sure.
Eric looked on Mike’s keychain. There was a Spark drive attached to the chain, so he plugged it into the computer.
No password required.
Dumbass.
For a security professional, your digital shit isn’t very secure.
Eric dragged the protocol file over to the Spark drive to copy it.
He looked at the clock on the computer.
Almost midnight. And he still had hours to go.
He logged off the VR system, which got rid of the Dark Figure.
Thank God for THAT, at least.
Before he began the next phase, he checked on his prisoner.
Mike was still awake. There was a puddle between his legs on the hardwood floor.
“Mrrrm!”
Eric ripped off Mike’s duct tape gag.
“OW – goddamn ASSHOLE – ”
“Quiet,” Eric ordered. “Don’t want to wake the neighbors.”
“Who the hell are you talking to in there?”
“Never mind that. I’m going to ask you one last time: when I go into Varidian in a few hours, am I going to have a problem?”
“No – no, I swear, I told you everything!”
“Good.”
“Look, man, you gotta let me up – I gotta take a shit – ”
“No can do, Mike,” Eric said as he started to replace the gag.
“PLEASE, man, I’m BEGGING you – ”
“Just pretend you’re a baby again and in Pampers,” Eric said as he fastened the duct tape back onto Mike’s face.
“Mrrrm! MRRRMMMM!”
A swift kick to the ribs convinced Mike to shut up.
After fixing some coffee in the kitchen, he logged back onto the computer. For this next part he didn’t need the Dark Figure, so he didn’t bother putting on the VR headset.
He had to hack Varidian again. Only problem was, there were a whole lot more obstacles this time around.
For one thing, they’d be expecting it. He was pretty sure they would have shored up all their defenses by now, just like the Unnamed One had said.
Second thing: he didn’t want to hack the game this time, just the company’s local office. Power, security systems, office network. Which meant the Unnamed One wasn’t going to be of any use to him.
Third thing: the hack had to be timed perfectly… and it had to happen when Eric wasn’t here in Mike’s apartment.
He thought about the problem for a long while, pondering the different avenues he could take.
At the end, he decided on a two-pronged approach: an indirect offensive to soften Varidian up, followed by a backdoor attack on the facility.
Once he figured it out, he cracked his knuckles and set to work.
No rest for the wicked.
112
Daniel
So began the long, arduous climb up out of Hell.
Siffis led the way through the cave. ‘Fire monkey’ was an apt moniker: he walked like one, putting his knuckles on the ground and then swinging his body forward.
Anywhere there was an obstacle – such as a stream of flaming lava – the fiery sprite would merely absorb the heat and turn it into a bridge of solid rock. As soon as they were over it, the surrounding magma would slowly heat the stone back up and reabsorb it into the flow.
They climbed a rocky slope to a tunnel, which led to the mouth of a cave.
Outside was almost as bad as inside.
The landscape was a seemingly limitless plain of black rock and glowing streams of magma. Mountains and castles dotted the horizon, but there were no trees, no vegetation, no life of any kind. Just a dead, hot, oppressive wasteland.
The sky, though, was beautiful. A night sky more violet than black, with a billion stars and several nearby moons, one with rings like Saturn, another with raging storm clouds like Jupiter. It was almost like being on another planet somewhere in the far-flung reaches of space.
In fact, in combination with the night sky, the realm of Hell took on a savage kind of beauty – a mixture of the sublime and the horrific.
It was little consolation, though, as they trudged across the infernal landscape.
A little way into the trip, Daniel got pulled out by the team at Varidian. He relayed what had happened and told Jerome that he’d been right: the game had provided a way out.
“Do you want to stay logged out?” his father asked. He looked tired. “It’s almost 11 o’clock.”
“No, the other guys don’t have anybody to pull them out of the game. I need to go back in until I know they’re okay.”
Mr. Lauer reluctantly agreed. Daniel got back in the pod, with the understanding that the team would remove him again after one hour of Real World time.
Once he was back in Hell, he kind of wished he’d waited a little longer.
Each one of them died multiple times. Lotan was the first to go. Drogar was reduced to carrying him in his arms, the droth was so weak. His skin crackled like dried fish scales whenever he moved, and his eyes were so dry they eventually stopped blinking.
One minute he was gasping for breath… and then the next he was gone.
The group stood there in solemn silence.
But before anyone could ask what they should do, Lotan was awake again – his skin plumped out, his eyes moistened, completely back to normal.
“Oh my God, that’s so much better,” he sighed.
“I should just die every fifteen minutes.”
“I told you,” Daniel said.
In the end, that’s more or less what they resorted to: killing one another so they could regenerate faster and not have to suffer through the last phases of debilitation. Once their energy began severely flagging, out came the swords.
It was pretty horrific, but it was a relief to come back refreshed – if only for a few minutes. Then the harsh environment would begin to take its toll again.
At least they had Siffis. He moved like a cat, creeping on all fours – and everywhere he walked, he absorbed the heat from the ground so that it was cool as they passed over it. That, at least, made the journey more bearable.
Along the way, Daniel questioned his traveling companion. “Are there a lot of you, Siffis?”
“There is only one Siffis.”
“No, I mean, are there a lot of elemental fire spirits?”
“Yes.”
“Do they all live here?”
“No.”
“Where do they live, then?”
“Anywhere there is fire.”
“But there’s fire here,” Daniel said, confused.
“Yes.”
Daniel realized he’d asked if all fire spirits lived here, and he amended his question. “Do some fire spirits live here in Hell?”
“Yes.”
It wasn’t that the fire creature was being rude – it was just very literal. And not so bright.
“Do you have a leader?”
“Yes.”
“Could we meet him?”
“Why?”
“We’re fighting an evil sorcerer, and we need help.”
“Doot, vhat are you doing?” Drogar asked.
“Trying to get allies. I’m not sure we’re going to be able to make it to the dwarves in time.”
“Getting a bunch of fire spirits on our side would be pretty awesome,” Vlisil conceded. He was riding atop Drogar’s shoulders since he was so short. Each one of Drogar’s steps equaled six of his.
“Siffis, do you think your people would fight with us?”
The fire sprite merely shrugged. “Maybe.”
Though Daniel asked dozens of other questions, he got little more of value out of Siffis than that.
They walked for hours in relative silence. Along the way, his thoughts kept returning to Mira – how she was doing right now.
If she was safe.
That kiss she’d given him for good luck.
He dropped out of a daydream about her several times and caught himself touching his cheek.
Frankly, those daydreams were the only thing that kept him going through the wastelands of Hell.
Finally they came to a gigantic molten pit in the ground, like the crater of a volcano, where lava bubbled in the center. They had to stand over a hundred yards away, the heat was so intense.
“Wait here,” Siffis instructed them, then trotted forward and submerged himself in the lava.
“Jeez,” Vlisil whispered. “You don’t think we have to go out through that, do you?”
“I hope not,” Daniel muttered.
Minutes later, heads and bodies began emerging from the molten lava. They were like Siffis in one respect: red and orange swirled through their yellow skin, and flames flickered over their bodies. Also, their eyes were like glowing orange embers. But that was the extent of the similarity.
The majority of them looked human, and wore robes of rippling magma. There were women and men, judging by body types. Their hair was composed of flame, but it didn’t fall down their shoulders: it crackled upwards like a miniature bonfire.
There were also multiple variations of body shapes: many that were humanoid, a couple of others like Siffis, but also some that were larger and more muscular, like orcs.
The creatures all walked up on land, their bodies dripping lava in their wake. The figure in the center stepped forward. It was a male, and he wore a circlet of glowing red stone on his forehead. His face was fixed in a permanent scowl.
Siffis crept off to the side and sat on his haunches to watch. The rest of the fire spirits stood there waiting in silence.
When it became apparent that nobody else was going to speak first, Daniel raised his hand in a friendly wave. “Uh… hi. I’m Daniel, and these are my friends Dro– ”
“What do you want?” the leader interrupted.
“Uh… well, we were trapped in a cave by an… evil spirit, I guess you’d call it, and we need to get back to the Shattered Lands. Can you help us?”
“Yes. Follow me.” The leader turned back towards the magma lake.
Lotan raised a finger hesitantly. “Could you let us out near a body of water?”
The fire king looked back at him in disgust, but said, “We shall see.”
“Uh – by the way, we were kind of hoping you might join our fight,” Daniel interjected.
The leader frowned even more than usual. “Why would we do that?”
“Well, the evil spirit is working with a sorcerer in the Shattered Lands, and a general from here – his name is Korvos, do you know him?”
“We know OF him, yes.”
“Well, we’re pretty sure they want to conquer everything in the Shattered Lands.”
“That is no concern of ours.”
Daniel frowned. “Once they finish conquering humans and elves and everybody else, they might turn their attention to you guys.”
“They are welcome to try.”
“But now’s the time to stop them, before they get too powerful – ”
“I wish you luck. But we will not fight.”
Daniel stared. “Even if it means you’ll eventually be in danger?”
“Human, we have lived ten thousand years. We have seen countless civilizations rise and fall.”
Daniel wanted to say, You’ve been PROGRAMMED to think that, yeah, but he held his tongue.
The fire king continued. “Your kind’s plots and schemes do not concern us. When others have tried to encroach upon us, we have destroyed them. We will do so again if necessary.”
“Then why help us get out of here?”
“Doot,” Drogar whispered harshly.
“Are you trying to talk them out of it?” Vlisil hissed.
The king gestured to the little fire sprite nearby. “Siffis has taken a liking to you for some reason. The request is a simple one to grant, so grant it I will.”
Daniel raised his eyebrows, then looked at Siffis. “Thank you.”
No answer or reaction from the fire monkey.
Coulda fooled ME you like us…
Daniel turned back to the king. “And thank you, too.”
The only thing the king did was turn around and head for the molten lake.
“Is that the way?” Daniel asked.
“Yes.”
“We, uh… we can’t pass through that.”
“Not in its current state, no.”
The fire king knelt down and submerged his hand in the magma.
Out in the center of the crater, the liquid rock began to swirl, until there was a whirlpool and a funnel leading down into the depths.
Then he began to absorb heat with his hand.
Solid rock formed like crystals in ice, rushing out in all directions through the glowing lava. When it got to the whirlpool, the spinning vortex solidified into black rock, a spiral of stone down into the depths of the fiery liquid.
“Holy crahp,” Drogar whispered.
“Come,” the fire kind ordered, and began to stride out across the land bridge.
Daniel looked at his friends.
They shrugged.
Suddenly Daniel felt a gentle tugging on his hand. He looked down and saw Siffis yanking on his armored gauntlet. Once the sprite had his attention, it gestured with one hand like Come along and started knuckle-walking across the stone bridge.
“Oh man,” Daniel muttered as he followed after the fire sprite.
The entire group walked out onto the rock platfo
rm. Glowing liquid bubbled at the edges of the bridge, and the air scorched their faces, but the rock was cool beneath their feet.
When they got to the whirlpool, the spiraling waves of stone formed a natural walkway down into the center of the lake, at least a hundred feet below the surface.
They continued downwards, like Dante following Virgil towards the ninth circle of Hell. Except in this case, Virgil’s role was played by a fire king and a fiery Capuchin monkey.
As they got further down the spiral walkway, Vlisil looked up. Molten rock was beginning to drip over the side of the solidified rock sixty feet over their heads.
“Oh man, I really hope this thing doesn’t collapse, ‘cause it is gonna SUCK if we keep respawning in here,” the goblin whimpered.
“It will not collapse,” the king said emotionlessly.
They entered the narrowest part of the funnel, which then took a 90 degree turn into a stone lava tube. They walked through the darkness, lit only by the orange glow of their two guides –
Until they spied what appeared to be daylight at the end of the tunnel.
“Oh my God!” Daniel whispered, finally allowing himself to get excited.
“Oh yeeeaaaaah,” Drogar chuckled.
“FINALLY,” Vlisil said, then cackled.
“Oh please let there be a body of water,” Lotan whined.
They reached the mouth of the tunnel, which ended in a cave in a vast field of grass. The sun was just coming up over the horizon, and the early morning light sparkled off a nearby pond.
“OH YES!” Lotan screeched with joy, and bolted across the meadow at full speed and dove into the water.
The air was sweet and cool, and the breeze lifted the heat from their skin.
“Thank you,” Daniel said sincerely. “I really can’t thank you enough.”
The fire king nodded, then headed back towards the lava tube.
“What’s your name?” Daniel asked.
The king turned back in irritation. “I am Rasrak, king of the Ignae.”
‘Ignae’ must have been plural for ‘Ignis.’
“Are you sure you won’t join our fight against the sorcerer?” Daniel tried again.
Shattered Lands 2 The Fall Of Blackstone: A LitRPG Series Page 26
