Siffis kept slicing through the enemy ranks like a blowtorch through butter. Within two minutes it was all over.
“We DID it!” Daniel cried out, and the rest of the human soldiers shouted out behind him.
Siffis leapt back up on Daniel’s shoulder and sat there impassively.
“Thank you,” Daniel said.
“Go,” the creature said impatiently, pointing off into the darkness.
Daniel chuckled, then crawled over the piles of armored skeletons to join Lotan. “Well done.”
The droth started blinking his large, fish-like eyes obsessively, one eye at a time. “If I get pink eye because of this – ”
“It’s a digital environment. I don’t think they programmed in pink eye.”
“Besides, if you’re going to get anything, you’ll probably get something a whole lot worse than pink eye,” Vlisil snickered.
“SHUT UP!” Lotan shrieked.
“Let’s go,” Daniel sighed.
Using Siffis as a beacon for the soldiers behind him, he headed deeper into the sewers.
128
They stopped by Merridack’s old quarters on the way, but the door was locked. He tried knocking, but there was no answer, so he gave up and continued onwards.
As they trudged through the darkness, Daniel asked, “Mira – what’s going on out there?”
“Uh… quite a bit, actually. They just let down the drawbridge and they’re sending out the army.”
Daniel almost tripped when he heard that, he was so surprised. “What?!”
“Yeah, I guess they’re REALLY confident. Even though I’d say they’re outnumbered at least five to one.”
“That’s weird…”
“Well, it makes your job a whole lot easier, right?”
“I guess… any sign of the dragon or Eric?”
“Not of Eric. The dragon’s is rising up out of the forest. Maybe that’s why the bad guys are confident.”
“Okay – keep me posted.”
After another five minutes they reached one of the street-level exits. Daniel pulled off the iron-barred grate, then peeked his head aboveground.
It was a deserted alleyway with no one in sight.
He hoisted himself onto the street, then gave a hand to Lotan and Vlisil.
Drogar, though, was stuck. The hole was smaller than the width of his shoulders.
“Doot, I can’t fit!” he complained.
“Get back about six feet away,” Daniel said, then turned to the sprite. “Siffis, can you open it up some?”
The creature jumped down and touched the edges of the hole. Within seconds the stones began glowing white-hot. Within ten seconds they began to melt and drip into the sewer, where they sent up cascades of steam as they hit the water.
“That’s enough,” Daniel said when the hole was sufficiently wide. “Cool it down now.”
The sprite reabsorbed all of the heat, and the glowing edges of the crater suddenly turned back into cold, mangled stone.
Drogar lifted himself up to street level, then began hoisting up soldiers as easily as picking up ragdolls, sometimes two at a time.
“Get the rest of them out of there,” Daniel ordered. “We’re going ahead.”
Daniel led Vlisil, Lotan, and the rest of the forces through the narrow alleyway until they reached a side street that led to the wall. They passed curious faces in windows and doorways; Daniel just put a finger to his lip – Shhh! – and the citizens nodded happily, their faces a mixture of hope and relief. Apparently life had not been so wonderful under the Sorcerer King – at least, no one seemed willing to betray the invading force with a cry of Intruders!
They reached the city wall and followed along parallel with it as it curved towards the main gates. They tromped over piles of garbage, through narrow gaps between buildings and the wall – but never once were they attacked from above. Daniel was guessing the archers were distracted by the armies outside the castle walls. Besides, the only way to see Daniel and his men was to look straight down the 200-foot precipice to the streets below. There was no reason to do that, so the soldiers remained undetected as they sped towards the gates.
“Mira, what’s going on?” Daniel said.
“It’s actually pretty close,” Mira said. “The Hell army may be outnumbered, but they don’t die easily.”
“Unless they get tackled by a fire monkey.”
“What?”
“I’ll tell you later. What about inside the castle walls?”
“Nothing. The last of the soldiers went through a few minutes ago and they hauled the drawbridge back up. There’s almost nobody inside the castle walls.”
“We’re coming up on the Court of Mercenaries – anybody there?”
“No. Nothing. The dragon’s swooping around raining fire down on people, but it’s mostly staying outside the city, so I don’t think it’ll see you.”
“We’ll be exposed when we run across the courtyard– can you provide a distraction?”
“I think so. Get in place and wait for me.”
Daniel assembled all 500 men behind a stone building on the edge of the Court of Mercenaries, about a thousand feet from the gates.
The entire courtyard was empty. Outside the city gates, the roar of battle could be heard: clashing swords, the thundering of hooves, the roar of tens of thousands of voices.
Drogar returned to the front of the group with the leaders of the individual platoons in tow.
“What are we waiting for?” one knight asked.
“We’ve got a diversion coming. When it does, we’re going to run single-file along the wall until we get over there.”
Daniel pointed to a gigantic archway built into the stone wall. He’d passed through the gates on the first day of his quest for the Mines of Alark, so he knew that there was approximately 50 feet between the inner courtyard and the outer wall – and in that 50 feet were numerous members of the blue-caped Blackstone guard. He just couldn’t see them at the moment because of the angle.
“Once you’re inside, do whatever you have to do to lower the drawbridge and raise the portcullis. As soon as that’s done, Byrel will enter the city – but don’t abandon your post until the entire army’s inside.”
“Daniel, get ready!” Mira said.
Daniel looked up in the sky. High above the wall, a bird-shaped shadow was silhouetted against the sky – along with the massive oak it was carrying.
Suddenly the tree dropped through the air.
“Go!”
Daniel sped off across the courtyard, sticking close to the wall. Siffis clung to his shoulder, tiny fingers clamped down on the armor.
Everyone followed close behind him.
The massive oak SLAMMED into the wall far above them.
WHAM!
Blue-caped guards and broken pieces of the wall tumbled down and crashed to the ground.
Daniel ran as fast as he could. He leapt over the newly-fallen rubble and bloodied, broken bodies and continued onward.
The arch was fast approaching.
Within twenty seconds he cleared the edge of the entrance.
There were only about fifty blue-capes inside the dark interior. They congregated around a huge wheel and metal chain system that raised and lowered the drawbridge. The wheel was gigantic, with eight wooden poles jutting out for men to turn it.
As Daniel rushed into the archway, the men looked at him in somnolent surprise, almost like they were sleepwalking. He noticed that every single one of their eyes were black.
They were possessed.
No wonder Eric had been able to take over Blackstone so easily.
“INTRUDERS!” one of the guards yelled as Daniel, Drogar, and the rest rushed forward.
Swords struck, spears clashed, and the first ten guards fell to the ground.
Siffis leapt from Daniel’s shoulder and blasted the first guard in the face like a flamethrower. The man screamed in agony and was dead before he hit the ground.
Apparent
ly killing human soldiers was even easier for the fire sprite than destroying undead ones.
As soon as they died, the black faded from their eyes, and the whites and irises could finally be seen as they breathed their last.
Daniel felt terrible, knowing the men were loyal to the city and couldn’t control their actions. What made it even worse was the horrific memory of what Eric had done to him.
As he cut them down, one by one, he kept repeating to himself, They’re only computer programs… it’s just a game…
“Siffis, get to that chain and melt it!” Daniel shouted.
The fire sprite dropped to the ground, then jumped, hopped, and leapt between soldiers up onto the chain.
The individual links were twelve inches long, with a three-inch diameter to the iron circlets. Not even Daniel’s sword or Drogar’s ax would have been able to break through.
Siffis liquefied the metal within seconds.
The chain whipped through the air as the drawbridge creaked and then SLAMMED! down across the moat.
That still left the massive portcullis, with its chessboard grid of iron bars. Unlike the drawbridge, it had to be lifted rather than lowered.
They could put ten soldiers on the wheel to do that, but why bother when he had something that could destroy it so much quicker?
“Siffis – go to the top of that metal door and melt it away, piece by piece!”
The sprite scurried up the bars to the very top and began dissolving the iron bars, one by one. Within seconds he could reduce a two-inch iron bar to a glowing, dribbling stream of molten liquid, after which he would move on to the next.
Drogar dispatched the last blue-caped guard. Daniel looked through the portcullis to the battle raging outside – tens of thousands of men and skeleton creatures battling on the plain.
Something struck him as odd, though:
Where are all of Eric’s demons?
“Mira, do you see Eric anywhere? Any of his demons?”
“No, nothing. The dragon’s still attacking, but that’s it so far.”
“We got the drawbridge and we’re about to get rid of the portcullis.”
“Fantastic!”
“Yeah,” Daniel said, though something inside him felt slightly disturbed.
All of this felt too easy.
Siffis finished the top bars of the portcullis and worked his way down the sides. Within another sixty seconds, the iron structure was completely unattached to the outer edges of its framework, like a slice of bread where someone has cut inside the crust and left the inner part intact.
The iron grid hung there for a second… tipped…
And then SLAMMED down on the wooden drawbridge with a resounding KRANG!
The result was immediate, if unexpected.
Thousands of horses and soldiers began stampeding back towards the castle –
But they were all the Hell army.
The coalition of soldiers led by Byrel followed close behind, but Korvos’ army of skeletons didn’t make any pretense of bravery: they all raced back towards the castle as fast as they could.
Daniel’s heart leapt into his chest. If the skeletons thought the drawbridge could be salvaged, then the archway was about to turn into a bloodbath. There was no way anyone inside would make it out alive.
“EVERYBODY OUT!” Daniel screamed. “SIFFIS, COME ON!”
He raced for the interior walls of the castle as thousands of hooves thundered across the grass towards the wooden drawbridge.
All of Daniel’s soldiers still alive made it out into the courtyard with just a few seconds to spare. Siffis was fastest of all, racing ahead of them like a fiery greyhound.
Just as the last man cleared the edge of the archway, the undead cavalry of rotting horses sped past in a massive torrent.
We still might die out here, Daniel thought. If they turn back –
But they didn’t. They raced as fast as they could down the main artery through Blackstone, towards the city center.
Daniel frowned.
What the hell?
The foot soldiers came next. Daniel expected them to spill out to the walls and start attacking him and his men, but not a single one seemed to care they were flanked by the enemy. They just followed the cavalry down the massive cobblestone street as fast as they could.
Then came Byrel’s horses thundering across the drawbridge. Daniel watched in amazement as hundreds of horses with shining knights raced down the streets, cutting down retreating skeleton soldiers in their path.
Then came the vast multitudes of foot soldiers of every race: humans, orcs, dwarves, elves, goblins, Taurians, and a dozen more. Daniel was sure that many of them were players, not just NPCs. For one, their clothes were idiosyncratic and didn’t match any of the others. The NPC soldiers were easy to identify by their uniforms; everyone else had to be players along for the ride.
They all stormed into the castle, yelling happily, swords raised in exultation as they raced after Byrel and the cavalry.
Then came the storm of arrows.
The city’s archers let loose barrage after barrage of deadly projectiles. Hundreds of soldiers died in the street – but hundreds more raced towards the stairs and clambered up them to do battle atop the wall.
“What do we do?” Drogar yelled.
“They don’t need us inside the city – they’ve already got Korvos on the run,” Daniel said. “Let’s head for the top of the wall and take out the archers!”
129
Eric
What happened next was chaos.
People started shouting and running as the computerized voice kept talking over the Varidian loudspeakers:
“You have profited too long on the backs of hardworking gamers, selling them products at outrageous markups and not caring about your customers. Well, today the customer strikes back.”
The whole ‘corporate pigs’ thing was a bunch of bullshit. He’d just made it up because he thought it made the hack sound a lot more threatening. He’d recorded almost ten minutes of it on an internet voice simulator and included it in his plan.
The guard in charge of the security line apparently thought so. His eyes bugged out in terror as he stared up at the speakers.
Eric took the opportunity to walk past the guard and disappear into the crowd of people scrambling to get back to their offices.
When Eric had been planning all this out, he’d figured that the easiest way into a fortress was to make them think they were being attacked, and slip in during the chaos.
He followed an entire group to the far end of the lobby. Everyone avoided the elevators – which were probably stuck anyway – and took the stairs instead. He kept tromping upwards with the people climbing the steps and noted the signs next to each floor’s exits. Two was Human Resources, Three was Administrative, Four was Operations –
Five was Quality Assurance.
In other words, people who either examined code or played the game and looked for errors.
He chose to exit at Five, figuring he could get back into the stairwell if he didn’t find what he needed.
He walked out with a huge crowd of people. Nobody gave him a second look; they were all panicking as the computerized voice continued to echo through the building.
“…hit you where it hurts the most, and the place you prize the highest: your pocketbook. Our hacker collective will begin liberating the money you have so unjustly stolen from the hands of gaming addicts and redistribute it around the globe, to those far more deserving than you and your corporate overlords…”
The entire fifth floor was a maze of cubicles, with an outer ring of offices with windows and a view. The cubicles were for peons, the underappreciated bottom rung of the gaming development world – and they were exactly what he needed. Anybody who had access to the game would do. He didn’t need a specific computer, just a terminal connected to the system.
Most of the cubicles were empty – it was 8 in the morning, after all – and the computers weren�
��t turned on yet. Which meant he would need a password to log on, which was a no-go. No way to hack passwords without a lot of time he didn’t have.
He looked for an empty spot where the computer was running but nobody was sitting in the chair.
There.
Somebody had left their station unattended, with a cup of steaming coffee next to the monitor. Code scrolled up the screen in a never-ending flow.
Eric sat down immediately, navigated to the outer shell of the Shattered Lands operating system –
“What are you doing?” somebody yelled over the booming electronic voice, which was still going: “…finally recognize the destructive role you play in global economics and corrupting the minds of today’s youth…”
Eric looked up, his heart beating wildly.
Some dude with glasses, a scraggly neck beard, and a faded rock ‘n roll t-shirt was staring at him.
Probably the guy whose seat he’d just commandeered.
Eric lifted his security badge, then dropped it and went back to the keyboard as he shouted, “Security wants me to log in from a different terminal. They’re trying to lock down the point where the hacker got in.”
“What?!” the guy yelled over the electronic voice’s ongoing political manifesto. “That’s stupid – there’s a whole department for that!”
“Take it up with my supervisor!” Eric yelled back as he typed furiously, trying to find the right subdirectory.
The guy reached over Eric to try to shut off the computer –
“HEY!” Eric roared, and hit the guy’s arm as hard as he could. “Let me do my job or get the HELL OUT OF MY WAY!”
The dude, like a lot of corporate peons, was actually pretty timid. He jerked back in surprise, then proceeded to throw a little temper tantrum – the equivalent of him stamping his foot. “I’m going to go get my boss!”
“Go get him, then!” Eric yelled as he continued typing.
The guy stomped off.
I hope I’m finished before he comes back, Eric thought nervously.
Shattered Lands 2 The Fall Of Blackstone: A LitRPG Series Page 30
