The Survivors Part 1: The Masacre

by Brian McGoldrick

  *My dimensional door isn't very efficient. If no one is using them, I can keep one open and ready for about twenty minutes, before the Mana cost to keep it open becomes more than the cost of opening a new one. Once people start using it, the Mana cost jumps up I'll hit Mana depletion after moving two hundred fifty or so people. If I really want to push, it I can do three hundred, but it'll put me flat on my back.*

  Connor's tone turns pensive. *Is there anyone else who can use a similar spell.*

  *There were two, but with the western wall being overrun, I'm sure they're already gone. Neither one is the type to stick around if it looks like a losing scenario.*

  *What about the other tunnels near the surface? Do they connect to the rest of the underground complex?*

  I feel hope to turn into a lead weight in my stomach. *We didn't find anything. They were probably part of higher level, and the spiral tunnel or the hole where the molten stone fell through the roof was the connection between them.*

  There are several long moments of silence.

  *We're going to need the strongest fighters up to hold the line as the rear guard.* Danleib's words hit us all like a bucket of cold water.

  The rear guard, the last wave to get out, is going to face the real possibility of being overrun and never making it out. Only the strongest fighters are going to have a chance of getting out alive.

  *This is going to have to be a volunteer job. We're not a real military, so I can't order people to do it. I'm back on the surface already, so I'll stay till the end.* Connor's solemn words and tone make it sound like he's making his last stand.

  In his military days, Connor had a reputation for never ordering his troops to do something he wouldn't do himself. Political, desk job officers hated him because his men were always among those with the highest morale and personal loyalty toward him. Career operations officers always seem to hate and fear real combat officers who engender personal loyalty in their men. His sense of personal honor and responsibility toward his men eventually led to him being court-martialed over a combat action. He refused to retreat until all of his men were recovered. He wasn't cashiered, but the career political officers him behind a desk until he retired.

  It's a bit strange. Everyone chosen by The Nameless, with a military background that I know the details of, seems to have been someone who was given the short end of the stick during their military career. Everyone except me that is. I was just one of the unlucky few to be wounded in action during Desert Storm. I was just given a nice shiny purple heart, and due to my injuries leaving me unfit for military service, I was forcibly discharged.

  *I'll hold the tunnel.* Ahlred's words carry heavy overtones of hate and anger. Whether it's toward the orcs or the players is anyone's guess, but most likely, it's both groups.

  *I'll stay with the squid. Can't trust a squid to do a job right, without a soldier to supervise him.* Wihtred's sarcastic tone lightens the heavy air left by Ahlred.

  *Fuck you.*

  *Sorry, sailor. I only fuck chicks.*

  *You're going to have your work cut out for you. The orcs are up to something at that bore hole.* Connor's statement puts an end to the banter before it gets off the ground.

  *We'll stop them.* The cold, murderous intent in Ahlred's words leaves no question as to his intentions.

  *I'll go back up to the surface. My guild is still up there.*

  Dead silence meets my words. For a few moments, no one says anything, but I can almost hear the gears turning in Danleib's mind.

  *Thorrin, you don't have to ...*

  I cut Danleib off in mid-sentence. *It's my choice! Just let it go. Please.*

  I don't have to stand with the rear guard, but if I don't, I know I'll hate myself. This time it's more than just my unrelenting sense of responsibility. I have the memories of a Dvergar child, helplessly seeing his small clan destroyed at the hands of the DokkAlfar. He carried the hate and regret over being unable to do anything for his entire life, and now, those regrets are becoming a part of my own psyche. The real Thorrin is dead and gone, and Harold T. Sawyer is dying. I am becoming a fusion of both. Who or what will I be when it's over?

  *You can tell your friends to stop cutting apart the blast door. It might be our last line of defense against the orcs. We're just going to need a hole big enough to get through single file.*

  My words were directed at Agun, and he nods slightly, before using his whisper charm.

  *I've been preparing a little surprise for the orcs down here. It'll take a couple hours to finish it, but I'm pretty sure I can turn this complex into a huge magma pit. Well, it might turn out to be a small volcano, but it should peter out pretty quickly.*

  *What are you talking about?* Blatant confusion fills Connor's words.

  *There is a Mana generator down here at the bottom of the complex, and it's basically the magic equivalent to a theoretical magma tap reactor. Except, instead of using steam to generate electricity, it somehow converts something from the magma, heat maybe, to Mana. The magma appears to be under a huge amount of pressure. If we crack the containment fields, it should take out the entire complex.*

  Danleib's assessment seems off to me. *What do you mean by a lot of pressure? The magma in the streams down there could be called turgid at best.*

  *That's just runoff being released from the reactor. It's probably flowing through tunnels back to some river of magma at a much lower depth. The magma in the reactor is being funneled from a high pressure source, maybe the planet's mantle itself.*

  Danleib chuckles nastily. *If the orcs want in so bad, we should let them chase us in and blow the reactor while we escape through that tunnel.*

  After a few moments of silence, the party channel fills with Ahlred's murderous intent. *I like the idea. Killing half a million orcs in one fell swoop, what could be better?*

  *Fine. Let's do it.* With Connor's agreement, the decision is set.

  I pass leadership of the party to Connor, and he brings the surviving guild leaders in. A few of them make stupid objections, but what can you expect from gamers? Someone always has to want to do things his own way. When the objectors have no plan of their own to offer, Connor gets the rest of the guild leaders on board. There is not another option, and no matter how dense some of them can be, they will have to take the chance, if they don't want to die at the hands of the orcs.

  The Last Day

  The Great Fuck Over Day 4,185

  It's around midnight. Unlike the preceding nights, the orcs aren't having another rape and torture party. A pack of ten or eleven thousand of them are clustered at the mainland end of our spit of land, keeping up the pressure on our defensive line.

  Scattered around the bowl valley, fifteen groups of orcs and their slaves, human or otherwise, are surrounding excavation pits in the valley floor. From his throne, set atop a huge hill made from excavated dirt and stone, the Black Orc watches over everything. Periodically, runners take a message from the Black Orc to the excavation sites.

  Agun's three friends have already cut a man-sized hole through the blast door. Because of the sigils in the escape tunnel, Agun cannot open a dimensional door from directly inside of it to the surface. Without having a hole in the door, Agun would have to double gate everyone, and our escape would take over twice as long. The geomancers were taken into the escape tunnel with a double gate hours before the hole was made in the door and should be hard at work clearing the stone blocking the other end of the tunnel.

  Agun should be starting to move the main bulk of the players about now. My guild is scheduled to be part of the third wave and will be more or less out of harm's way. To keep the rest of players from fearing abandonment, Dacbold, Farnulf and I will stay until the very end. That was the demand of several of the more cowardly guild leaders. They feared the plan collapsing if there weren't still Dvergar among the defender, but to keep them from stirring up unrest, they also demanded to be part of the first wave moved into the complex.

  The orcs aren't making
a serious push. Their only purpose seems to be keeping us more of less pinned down with spells and missile fire. It feels like they are more worried about us interfering with the excavations, or more accurately the Black Orc is the one worried about it. Not knowing that we have the dimensional doors, he must be trying to keep us out here from hooking up with the forces we already have inside the complex. That is just fine. The more time we can gain without having to seriously fight, the better it is for us.

  Dacbold and Farnulf are standing silently beside me. From the elevation where we are standing, we can more or less clearly see the entire defense line built. Since I don't remember this high of a hill, Dacbold must have had the geomancers raise it while they were working on the bulwark.

  The defenses at the shoreward end of this spit of land are rather impressive. A trench was opened, letting the seawater flood in between our refuge and the massed orcs. With orcs being such bad swimmers, it will be a huge obstacle for them. Probably using the stone dug from between the spit and the mainland, another twenty foot high crenelated wall was built across the width the of the strip of land. The only problem is that this is a bit more than three times the length of the one we had on the beach.

  Looking at Farnulf, he has hands clasped at waist level. His head is bowed and his eyes are closed. Knowing him, he is probably making his final peace with the God he still believes in. I was raised Christian, but it's been a long time since I believed. I suppose I stopped believing when I learned the truth about the circumstances surrounding my cousin Danny's suicide.

  The orc have brought in thousands of goblin slaves. I never saw anywhere near that number of goblins in the footage from Danleib's clockwork birds, but considering the orc horde seemed to be moving in groups scattered over a huge area, it's not too surprising. With goblin slaves digging and prebuilt frames with block and tackle to haul up barrels of stone and rubble, the orcs are too well prepared to be digging here. Was this valley their original goal and our luck just that bad?

  As if I just heard some dry cosmic joke, I almost like laughing, but the cold reality of the situation leaves it stillborn.

  After notifying Connor about the situation, I can do nothing but watch the orcs and goblins work.

  * * * * *

  It's only an hour or so until dawn. Even though humans can't see the difference, to Dvergar eyes, the eastern sky is already lightening. The orcs can probably see it too. Their darkness vision is superior to a human by orders of magnitude.

  The evacuation is moving faster than normal, but Connor said Agun is pushing himself so hard that he's probably going to at least partially cripple his Power before he's done. That leaves a sour taste in my mouth. Does the good of the many outweigh the good of the few or the one? The few or the one always seem to be the people like Connor, the other Dvergar, and Agun. The ones who get fucked over, used up, and killed are always the ones who have the courage to step up and take responsibility for others failings. I used to accept that, but after the past twelve years of seeing it happen time and again, I'm beginning to feel like it's wrong. Sacrificing myself I can accept, but I can't accept sacrificing others like them any more. Why should Agun have to burn himself out for these people, many of whom won't even feel a shred of gratitude for it?

  Mentally shaking off the questions I can't answer yet, I take a look around. The warriors main body of the orc horde are stirring. It's almost time to make our final stand.

  At the sound of metal-shod footsteps behind me, I turn and see Tomas and Kat. It feels like heart turns to stone and falls down around my balls.

  “No. Why?”

  Tomas and Kat look at each other smile. Despite the sadness apparent on their faces, they seem content. On Earth, even though they are still a good bit younger than me, they are an old married couple with grandchildren.

  Tomas puts his hand on my shoulder. “Don't worry it's just us. We sent the rest through the gate.”

  “This is a suicide mission. There's no guarantee that anyone else will get out of here. What about your children and grandchildren.”

  Kat smiles. “We're old like you. Well not quite as old as you. Even if we survive and get back to Earth, it's been twelve years. How much time do we have left? I probably have great grandchildren by now. I'm sad I won't get to see them, but let the younger ones survive. They still have futures ahead of them. Besides, we've been in gaming guilds with you since before Taereun ever started. How could we abandon you now?”

  “The main reason I'm here is so you and the other Hammers can escape. Without me, they'll need your guidance.”

  Tomas shrugs. “Maybe, it's time for the Hammers to end. Nessa and the other young ones have sort of grown up, and the whole purpose of our guild was to protect the young ones in that wonderful, insane, and lawless environment that was Taereun: Battleground of the Damned.”

  I sigh. “Damn.”

  Kat bends down and kisses me on the cheek. “you're too willing to suffer for others. If you weren't so self-sacrificing you never would have been crippled in that plant accident.”

  “I lost the use of my legs, but that kid would have died. He was was fresh out of college and just standing there like a moonstruck calf.”

  “Your need to watch out for yourself more.” Kat hugs me and whispers in my ear, before straightening up again. She is acting like there is a real chance we can get out of this alive.

  They have made up their minds. After knowing them for more than thirty years before the start of Taereun, I know them well enough to know there is almost no chance of them changing their minds. Too tired to argue, I turn back toward the bowl valley.

  Despite being upset at Tomas and Kat sacrificing themselves alongside me, I can't stop myself from feeling the heartwarming feeling of camaraderie, but it's followed by guilt. If I wasn't here, they would have both left with the rest of the Hammers.

  As the eastern sky slowly grows brighter, the orcs form up in ranks. By the time the sun begins to rise over the eastern horizon, there are close to a hundred thousand of them ready to assault our defenses. It looks like this time the orcs are here to finish us off. Even though the Black Orc isn't commanding them, the orc in command is a lesser chieftain that is still probably Coalescent, but I will need to see it using Power to be certain.

  Farnulf and Dacbold, who were inspecting our very thin line of defenders, join me up on the command platform again.

  Dacbold looks at the massed orcs. “We'd best stay off the line so we can intervene wherever they break through.”

  Farnulf looks like he wants to disagree but sighs instead. “He's right. Even with the bulwark, there is no way humans are going to hold a line this long against that many orcs.”

  Before I can stop myself, I momentarily laugh. “The two of you are in agreement; looks like the world will end by midnight.”

  “Should it matter to us? We're going to be dead by noon.” Farnulf's voice has a matter of fact tone.

  “It won't get bad until the next group is pulled out. With only two hundred fifty people to hold a two thousand foot defensive line, we're going to be in trouble.”

  Farnulf frowns. “It will be less than that on the line. Thirty of those people are some of our strongest AoE Casters.”

  AoE is gamer slang for area of effect. Those thirty casters may be able to lighten the burden somewhat, but it's really going to depend on how the orcs attack. With a line this long, their shamans would be much harder pressed to keep up a spell like that wind barrier they used on the beach. They will probably focus on a smaller area where they are making their hardest push and leave most of the other orcs unshielded. Assuming they do, our AoE Casters will allow us to hold until we can get evacuated.

  “That Black Orc seems more interested in digging than killing us. It's like he already knew about the underground complex when he came here. That is probably our only real hope.”

  Dacbold squints his eyes and stares at the Black Orc sitting on his throne. “We already know that Black Orcs are a super
ior breed of orc. Do you think they could have genetic memory?”

  “Do you think that just because those constructs look like giant orcs, they have something to do with that complex?”

  Dacbold meet my eyes with a hard stare. “You have some of the same historical memories I do. Orcs were supposed to have been made by Dragons when they were multi-dimensional space faring conquerors. Do you think they never had technology?”

  Dacbold's statements hit me like a barrel of cold water. Orcs, for me, the name goes back to fantasy novels. It's the same word Tolkien used for his corrupted race. They don't really look the same, but in my mind, they were the same barbarous, ignorant, animalistic race as in fantasy literature. I feel a strong urge to laugh at myself.

  I nod. “You're right. These aren't fantasy orcs. They're a real race with a completely different origin. They're certainly acting like they knew the complex was there. If it's a racial memory, I wonder what he's looking for?”

  Dacbold just shrugs.

  When the orcs begin their assault, the Casters who are being pulled out in the next wave are the ones who use their spells. Like every other assault, it begins with an exchange of missile and spells. The Casters who are staying with us till the end just watch for the most part. Every now and then, one of them casts a spell, but it's never their big stuff. The last two hundred fifty odd of us are all volunteers. Even if no one is saying it, they all know that we are probably not going to make it.

  The orc in command stares intently at the patterns of attack and defense for a while. When he starts issuing commands, the orc shamans create a wind barrier around five hundred feet wide on our left flank, and the real attack begins. The seawater in the trench freezes solid in a matter of minutes, giving the orcs a solid avenue of attack. The hundred foot wide trench becomes nothing more than a slippery pain for them, but they don't seem to be bothered by they slickness of the surface under their feet.

  There are a few times that the orcs gain a minor foothold under the cover of the wind barrier, but we Dvergar intervene and shove them back each time. Still, there are losses on our side. By the time the fourth dimensional door opens, we are down to about four hundred and eighty people.