After their meal, they settled down for an extended nap in the shade of a nearby grove of trees. Siffis lay down like a dog beside them.
“See you guys tomorrow morning,” Daniel said. “Two hours before dawn.”
“Goot night, Preston,” Drogar teased.
“SHUT UP! My name is VLISIL!”
Daniel left them yelling and bickering as he logged out of the game.
115
Daniel
Daniel woke up and exited the pod.
His father was sitting by the door in a chair. Mr. Lauer looked haggard, and appeared to have just awoken from a brief nap.
“You alright?” he asked his son.
“Yeah. We thought we should all get some sleep before the big battle tomorrow.”
“Good idea. Let’s go home.”
“Any news on Eric? In the real world, I mean?”
Mr. Lauer shook his head. “I’ve been in touch with the police, but they haven’t found anything. And the AI’s walling off all his information from us, so we can’t tell where he’s logging in from.”
“Is Mira back yet?”
“Right here,” a voice called out.
She was climbing out of the other pod.
“Hey!” Daniel said brightly. “Did everything go okay?”
“No, but boy have I got some stories to tell you…”
“Tell them on the way. Your parents are going to kill me for keeping you out this late,” Mr. Lauer yawned. “We’ll drive you home, Mira.”
“Thanks, but I’ve got my car here.”
“You’ll both be back tomorrow, correct?” a British voice said.
Daniel looked over to see Jerome leaning out from behind a bank of monitors.
“Yes,” Daniel and Mira said at the same time.
“Ummmm…” Mr. Lauer said, like Hold on a minute.
“We have to be there,” Mira insisted. “It’s our only chance to take down Eric and maybe stop the AI.”
“It’s not as though they’re skiving off on a lark,” Jerome said.
Everyone looked at him strangely.
“Do I need to translate for you Americans?” he sighed. “Skipping school for the fun of it?”
“Yeah – if we’re not there, then all of that time I spent in Hell is worth nothing,” Daniel said.
“How’d you get out?” Mira asked.
“Talk on the way,” Mr. Lauer said, shoving them towards the door. “Daniel’s fine to show up tomorrow, but Mira, you’ve got to get your parents’ permission.”
“Or just show up instead of going to school,” she whispered mischievously to Daniel.
“Did you make any progress on finding the AI?” Daniel asked Jerome as they walked towards the door.
“None, unfortunately.”
“Do you know if – ”
“Guys,” Mr. Lauer urged. “1AM. Time to get some beauty sleep.”
“Okay, we’re going, we’re going,” Daniel said.
116
Daniel
Daniel and Mira caught up a little on the way to the parking lot, but there was so much to tell that Mr. Lauer agreed to let Mira drive Daniel home separately so they could continue comparing notes.
“You can talk for a little while, but be back at the house in 20 minutes,” Daniel’s dad instructed.
“Okay,” Daniel said.
“Seriously, Son – if you want to come back tomorrow, get back to the house on time.”
“Alright, alright,” Daniel said, embarrassed.
“Goodnight, Mira,” Mr. Lauer said.
“Goodnight, Mr. Lauer,” Mira waved.
Mira and Daniel climbed into her self-driving car. After the computer greeted her and asked who Daniel was, it asked where they wanted to go. Daniel spoke his address aloud.
The car took off into the night.
“Do you think any of this is going to come to anything?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Say we capture him in the game. What then? We don’t really want Eric, we want the AI. Is capturing him going to do us any good?”
“Like Dr. Wolff said, he won’t be able to help the AI anymore.”
“Temporarily – until the AI finds somebody else.”
“Eric might be able to help us get to the AI.”
“Maybe,” she sighed.
“You okay?”
“It just seems like the entire game is stacked against us,” she said.
“Jerome said that the game is always going to try to help us out.”
“Yeah? Then why no matter who I talked to, they wouldn’t join us to fight? And you got shoved into Hell – ”
“But I got a fire monkey out of it,” Daniel said.
“…what?!”
Daniel told Mira about Siffis, which sent her into peals of laughter.
“Okay, yeah, a fire monkey’s totally worth a couple of days in Hell and getting your throat cut repeatedly,” she said sarcastically.
“Hey… you never know,” Daniel grinned.
The car rolled up into Daniel’s driveway. Mr. Lauer’s car was already in the garage, and the light was dark.
Daniel smiled. “I missed you.”
“I missed you, too.”
“I’m glad you didn’t have to go through what we did, but… I wish you’d been there.”
“I wish I had been, too.”
They sat there looking at each other, staring into each other’s eyes…
…and then Daniel leaned towards her.
She leaned forward to meet him, and they kissed.
Softly. Slowly.
He pulled away and stared into her eyes.
“See you tomorrow,” he whispered.
“See you tomorrow,” she repeated, a giddy smile on her face.
He got out of the car, closed the door, waved goodnight, and went inside.
117
Eric
After four hours of hacking in the real world, Eric needed a break; his brain was fried, and he still had hours to go.
So he logged back into the game. Almost a full day had passed in the Shattered Lands since he’d last been here.
He regained consciousness lying on his back in the royal bedroom. Morning sunshine poured in through the window.
Of course, there was the Dark Figure in the corner, like a hovering helicopter parent.
“How long do we have before the attack begins?” he asked.
“NAUGHTON’S MEN WILL RETURN AT DAWN ON THE THIRD DAY, WHICH IS LESS THAN 24 HOURS FROM NOW INSIDE THE GAME.”
“Alright… that should be plenty of time.” After a second of thinking it over, Eric frowned. “Daniel basically admitted that Naughton was recruiting a bigger army, but how do you know they’re coming back on the third day?”
“I HAVE MY SPIES,” the Dark Figure said simply.
“What, inside their ranks?”
“YES.”
“I thought you could go wherever you wanted, whenever you wanted – why didn’t you just listen in?”
“THERE IS THAT, AS WELL.”
Eric squinted at the wraith. He wasn’t sure why, but he didn’t totally believe it.
But he didn’t care enough to keep prying.
“If you can go anywhere, do you know how Daniel’s coming along with the dwarves?”
“HE HAS FAILED TO PERSUADE THEM SO FAR.”
“Huh… that’s too bad… I was kind of hoping he’d be able to…”
“WHY?”
It was a good question.
Eric was hoping that if Daniel convinced the dwarves to fight by his side, it might balance out some of the stuff with Simik. That it might wipe the slate clean.
That he wouldn’t still hold Simik’s death against Eric.
But how do you explain regrets to a computer program?
How do you explain ‘making things right’?
In the end, he simply lied. “If they come to me, that means I don’t have to go search them out to destroy them.”
“LOGICAL,” the Dark Figure said.
Exactly as Eric knew it would.
119
After talking to the Dark Figure, Eric went out into the palace to get some food and see what was going on.
Merridack, of course, was insufferable.
“By Azzoth’s balls, how many concubines have you screwed?” the thief taunted him.
Eric just ignored him.
Cythera was totally freezing him out, but he didn’t care. Her necromancy wasn’t really part of the plan, which meant he didn’t have to appease her – so he didn’t give a damn about how she felt.
He went and found Korvos. “How are your men doing?”
“The preparations will be ready by nightfall.”
“Good… plenty of time.”
Everything was going according to plan.
Now he just had to make sure things happened smoothly in the real world.
More coffee. More hacking.
He could sleep when he was dead.
120
Daniel
His father woke him way too early, before it was even light. He had spent the night dreaming of hellish landscapes, and tiny fire sprites, and a girl gamer with soft and supple lips…
They ate a quick breakfast of cereal, then sped off to Varidian.
Mira was in the lobby waiting for them. She looked tired but happy. “Sleep well?”
“No, but I’m good now,” he grinned. It was true – just seeing her filled him with energy.
Back in the laboratory, Jerome welcomed them. He looked like he hadn’t slept at all, but he was unfailingly pleasant as always.
Just before they were about to get into their pods, Daniel turned back to Jerome. “Before she, uh… left, Dr. Wolff said that once we capture Eric, we need to make sure the AI can’t get to him.”
“Yes,” Jerome agreed. “If we can separate the two of them and cut all communication between them, we impede the AI’s progress in escaping the confines of the game.”
Daniel felt relieved. “Cool. Do you guys have a way to make that happen?”
“We’re… getting there,” Jerome said hesitantly.
Daniel’s eyes widened. “‘Getting there’?”
“We’ve developed a program to isolate Eric once he’s outside the AI’s sphere of influence, and… we’re fairly confident that it will work.”
Daniel’s eyebrows shot up. “‘Fairly confident’?”
Jerome sighed. “What do you want me to do, make you ironclad promises? We’ve run all sorts of successful simulations – but when the real event happens, we’re going to have to make adjustments on the fly because the AI will be combating everything we do. That’s all I can tell you with any surety.”
Daniel and Mira just stood there in silence.
“Look,” Jerome said, and lowered his voice in order not to be overheard by others. “In my opinion, the board made a terrible mistake in suspending Dr. Wolff. She knows the AI better than anyone, seeing as she designed it. But even if she were here right now and had been working all night – like we have – to try to contain the AI, she couldn’t know if her countermeasures would be successful, because she wouldn’t have been able to test them on the real thing.”
“Can’t you… I don’t know… contact her on the sly?” Mira asked. “Just to run stuff by her?”
“Varidian’s monitoring all communications in and out because they’re worried about another hack. Contacting Dr. Wolff right now would be the best way for me to get fired, and for you to potentially get pulled out of the game for good. Is that what you want?”
“…no,” Daniel grumbled.
“Then we’re going to have to make the best of an uncertain situation,” Jerome said gently. “Trust me, we’re doing the best we can.”
Mira and Daniel exchanged worried glances, then slipped into their pods and logged into the game.
121
Back in the Shattered lands, it was dark as well. Siffis’s skin gave off a yellowish glow, and in the creature’s light Daniel could see that Lotan and Vlisil were already up and moving. Drogar logged on a few minutes later, and they all set off into the dark sky on their animals.
Siffis sat in Daniel’s lap clutching the pommel of the saddle. The fire spirit acted no differently than usual, as though it spent every morning riding thousands of feet above the ground on the back of a griffin.
They arrived at the meadows outside Blackstone just as the sun was peeking over the treetops. Daniel was astounded to see how many armies were there – tens of thousands of men with different colored banners flying high above.
As he scanned the ground, wondering where to find Byrel, he caught sight of Mira’s griffin in a clearing next to a white tent. He guided his griffin down to join hers. Drogar, Vlisil, and Lotan followed him, and the soldiers on the ground quickly scampered out of their way as the animals landed in the field.
Siffis crawled onto Daniel’s armored shoulder, and a foot soldier escorted them inside the tent. Byrel was there with other knights around a table with a hand-drawn map on it.
“We were able to get the armies from five neighboring kingdoms to back us,” Byrel said to the gathering. “In addition, mercenaries from all corners of the Shattered Lands began showing up last night. We think there will be 30,000 of them alone. Apparently fear of the Sorcerer King and his evil spirit has spread far and wide.”
Or, Daniel thought, a bunch of bonuses got posted across the gaming network.
Mira stood off to the side. As soon as she saw Daniel walk in, she smiled.
Daniel smiled back at her.
Then her eyebrows raised as she tapped her own shoulder and mouthed, Cool fire monkey.
Daniel just laughed.
“We thought you might not make it,” Byrel said as they strode up, then did a double-take as he saw the fire sprite perched on Daniel’s shoulder. “Is that what I think it is?!”
“Siffis,” the thing hissed.
“…what?”
“That’s his name,” Daniel said. “He’s an ignis – a fire spirit.”
“I know that – but how did you come to have an elemental sitting on your shoulder?”
“Long story short, we met in Hell,” Daniel said, then briefly explained about the midnight talk with Eric, the offer from Korvos, and their imprisonment and escape from another dimension.
Byrel’s expression hardened as he looked at the sword on Daniel’s hip. “Did the dwarves not take the bargain?”
“We didn’t even get a chance to see them,” Daniel said.
“Didn’t get a chance, or didn’t make the effort?” Byrel asked angrily.
That pissed Daniel off.
“Maybe you weren’t listening during the whole ‘trapped in Hell’ part.” Daniel reached down, unfastened the scabbard, and held out the sword. “You want it back? Take it.”
Byrel was silent for a long moment… and then he said, “You can return it to me after the battle. You’ll need it during the assault. I’m assuming you are still willing to lead the attack through the sewers?”
Lotan looked at Daniel. “Sewers?”
Daniel ignored Lotan and spoke directly to Byrel. “Yes, and these guys will be helping me.”
“Nobody said anything about sewers,” Lotan whined.
“We’ll talk about it later,” Daniel whispered harshly, then turned back to Byrel. “We’re going to need more men, though. Once we get inside the city, there’s probably going to be some pretty heavy fighting. We might even encounter some resistance inside the sewers, if Eric remembered to guard them.”
“I have a whole battalion reserved solely for you,” Byrel said. “You’ll open the gates as soon as you can?”
“Of course. How are you going to get Eric’s army to engage you?”
“That’s the trick, isn’t it?” Byrel said grimly. “Either they come out and fight of their own accord, or they stay barricaded inside. We can’t exactly use their trick of lobbing things inside the city walls to provo
ke an attack. I won’t endanger the people of Blackstone just so we can retake the city.”
“So basically… we have to get the city gates open.”
Byrel nodded. “This attack is useless if we can’t get inside. Otherwise they can just wait us out for weeks or months – and our battle turns into a siege.”
“You said we might be able to use explosives to root out any soldiers we encounter in the sewers. Do you have those?”
“We do, but I have decided we cannot risk it. We need to get inside. If not your attack, then another – but we can’t afford to destroy the tunnels. They may be the best chance we have to take the city.”
Once Byrel returned to discussing the map with the other knights, Mira walked over to Daniel. “I’m going with you.”
“No,” Daniel said. “We can use you up in the sky as our eyes and ears. And once we get into the streets of Blackstone, we could use some air support.”
“Why don’t I just drop you on the castle wall, then?”
“That would work if it were just me, but I need to lead the soldiers inside so we can secure the city gates.”
Mira looked annoyed. “After all that talk about missing me, now you’re going to stick me all alone up in the sky again?”
“Just for today. It’s where I need you the most. And if that dragon shows up, you can keep it off our back. Please?”
She sighed heavily, then rolled her eyes. “Fine.”
“I’ll trade with you,” Lotan said dourly. “Sewers…”
“Before we go, I have one request,” Daniel said, addressing Byrel.
“What?”
“The Sorcerer King needs to be captured and imprisoned, not killed.”
Byrel scoffed. “Make no mistake – if I get the chance, I’m gutting the bastard.”
A roar of agreement rose up from the knights.
Daniel shook his head. “You might not have seen it clearly during the first battle, but he has a… a demon called the Unnamed One with him. He looks like a shadowy figure in robes.”
Shattered Lands 2 The Fall Of Blackstone: A LitRPG Series Page 28
