Awaken Online: Dominion

by Travis Bagwell

  Which means…

  Frank didn’t need to finish that thought, glancing to the side. He met Alexion’s gaze for a fraction of a second – seeing the same realization reflected in his opponent’s eyes.

  Then Frank was moving. He lunged forward, using the little stamina he had managed to regenerate to convert his legs. His knees inverted with a sickening pop as he moved; Frank only stumbled slightly at the sudden change before regaining his balance. He knew he couldn’t fight off Alexion or his remaining troops. His health was low, his men were dead, and he was outnumbered.

  His only option was to snatch the strange fragment and run as fast and as far as he could. He could only hope that his enhanced strength was sufficient to carry the gate piece and that his waning stamina could hold out.

  “Don’t let him get the piece,” someone shouted.

  Frank tilted his head and saw Alexion in his peripheral vision. His opponent flapped his wings powerfully, speeding across the ground in a golden streak – his troops beginning to regroup behind him. It would only be a matter of time before they started to hurl spells at Frank’s back. However, his immediate problem was Alexion, the winged-man barreling toward the skeletal hand.

  “I can’t let you get it,” Frank muttered to himself. He couldn’t let his men have died in vain. He had been given another chance, and he couldn’t squander it. Frank pressed himself harder, the mutated muscles in his legs straining under the effort as he sped forward.

  The pair were neck and neck, the rest of the world fading as their focus centered on the gate piece. Frank snatched an axe from the loop at his waist, swinging it to the side to try to slow Alexion down. His opponent executed a barrel roll, nimbly avoiding the blow and continuing his headlong charge. Alexion’s hand raised, pointing at Frank, and a beam of light rocketed from his palm. Frank leaped over the beam, the energy leaving a burnt line in the gray dirt behind him as he raced forward.

  The gate piece loomed closer.

  Frank and Alexion both reached out, trying to grab the ragged silvery metal. The object was massive, but Frank felt confident that he could carry it if he used his bear form. Even as that thought crossed his mind, Frank felt his hands begin to change, the skin thickening and his fingernails stretching into claws.

  He just had to beat Alexion to it. He was so close.

  Frank felt his fingers curl around the gate piece only a fraction of a second before Alexion’s. The pair came to an abrupt halt, both holding a portion of the fragment on either side. Frank’s arms rippled with effort as he prepared to rip the piece away from Alexion. In the distance, he could make out the Nephilim preparing to fire, pinpricks of light glowing around their hands. He could run into the forest. If Frank could move fast enough and survive the first barrage, he might be able to lose Alexion and his troops in the darkness.

  The Nephilim fired, condensed beams of light rocketing toward Frank even as he heaved, pulling at the gate piece. He could do this!

  However, he never got the chance.

  Without warning, the skeletal hand clenched, its fingers curling inward. Light mana splashed against the ivory bone, the energy refracting in every direction, but causing little damage. Frank stumbled, falling back against the descending cage, and lost his grip on the gate piece. The strange object scraped against the palm of the skeletal hands, the sound sharp and grating.

  “What is this?” Alexion muttered, staring at the hand in horror. He looked around in confusion as they were engulfed in bone – trapped inside the skeletal fist.

  His question went unanswered. The fingers closed completely, sealing Frank and Alexion inside a pitch-black ivory tomb. Alexion and the gate piece vanished from sight, and Frank’s hands clawed at the darkness, only to swipe at empty air. Without warning, the floor seemed to drop out from beneath him, and he was sent hurtling into a dark abyss – the void swallowing what little light and sound remained.

  * * *

  The first thing Jason heard was shouting. Then something hit him. Hard. Dull pain radiated out from his cheek, compounding the pain that wracked his already throbbing head.

  He opened his eyes blearily to find himself looking into a pair of glowing-green eyes framed by a brutish emerald face. The beast grunted, a blast of air washing across Jason’s face. Grunt, it’s Grunt. It was getting easier for him to focus again.

  Jason ignored the notifications flashing in his peripheral vision. The lights were making his head hurt more, and he tried to swipe them aside – only to find that he had a death grip on what appeared to be a severed arm. His fingers were embedded in the ruined flesh. He stared at the limb in shock, his mind struggling to process what he was seeing. It looked like the palm had simply exploded and only a hole remained.

  “My sincere apologies for Grunt’s blunt approach, but this really isn’t a good time to be lying about,” Jerry said, his face briefly appearing above Jason and his eyes trained on something further away. Meanwhile, Grunt physically lifted Jason to a sitting position and gave him a firm pat on the back that almost sent him crashing face first into the ground again.

  Jason cradled his head, trying to catch his bearings. They seemed to be sitting near the entrance to the keep. A glowing red mist drifted through the air, mainly concentrated around Jason. His eyes widened as he followed Jerry’s gaze. The remainder of the Kin hovered around him, forming a protective semi-circle with their backs to the keep. They were barely holding back the horde of feral undead that clawed at the line.

  Morgan marched behind the soldiers, her four arms constantly moving as she cast spell after spell into the horde. Her Abomination now stood with the Kin, and the massive creature was almost singlehandedly withstanding the worst of the attack, allowing the soldiers to hover behind it and offer support. Even so, the ghouls were slowly destroying the Abomination, each wave of creatures carving at its decayed flesh. Its fight with Grunt seemed to have cost the creature.

  Why the hell is Morgan helping us now? Jason wondered, his head still feeling fuzzy.

  He could have sworn the dark mage had betrayed them. Then he recalled seeing her and Jerry backstab Thorn. That memory opened the floodgates, and other images came streaming back. The blood. Thorn’s crazed eye staring at him from inches away. The power sweeping through his body. Looking down, he realized the severed limb must belong to Thorn. Staring at the arm, he rapidly processed that thought before cramming the object in his bag.

  “Drink these.” A handful of potions were shoved into his hands, distracting him. He looked up to find Eliza staring at him intently, her eyes demanding and her voice insistent. Jerry and Grunt were gone – having moved to help shore up the line.

  “Please, hurry,” Eliza demanded when he didn’t move. “They need your help!”

  “She has a flair for understatement,” Cecil grumbled from nearby. “We’re screwed if you don’t get the hell up right now!”

  Acting automatically despite his still pounding head, Jason yanked the stoppers and chugged the contents of the small vials. Almost immediately, he began to feel better. His thoughts began to clear as his natural regeneration and the herbs in the tinctures replenished his waning mana. With that clarity came a better understanding of their situation.

  It was bad.

  It was really bad.

  The remaining survivors in the courtyard were pressed up against the keep, their backs to a literal wall. Before them stood an ocean of feral undead who now filled the courtyard. Thorn might be dead – his severed arm was evidence of that – but the problem he had created certainly hadn’t gone away. The only upside was that many of the ghouls were distracted, still chasing the fragments of dark mana that lingered in the market – a product of Jason’s last-ditch effort to destroy Thorn. He needed to help.

  Jason struggled to lift himself to his feet, but his legs buckled.

  Eliza was there in a flash, her fragile form lending some support.

  The world swam for a moment before settling once again. He had really overdone it this
time, and it was a struggle to concentrate – even with Eliza’s potions. But there was nothing for it. He needed to act, or his friends would die, and they would lose the city.

  However, there was one thing that they now had in abundance. Jason could see the piles of ivory bone and the remains of dozens of Kin strewn about the battlefield. His first impulse was to summon new skeletons, but he hesitated. Those minions would still have to fight off the ghouls, and they would be revived inside the enemy line where they would be immediately surrounded. At most, that would offer a distraction – nothing more.

  What they needed to do was destroy the horde.

  Jason focused on the fallen Kin that littered the former marketplace, their decaying flesh trampled by the feral undead and their congealed blood coating the cobblestones and mixing with the ivory dust. They were gone. Dead. But in death, they could serve another purpose.

  He hesitated. He knew what he had to do for them to survive, but it meant that these Kin would give up any chance to be interred in the mana well and rejoin their brothers and sisters. There would be nothing left by the time he was done. This was real death, and there was no coming back. A flash of crimson distracted him, and Jason turned in time to see one of the nearby Kin on the line gored by a pair of ivory claws, the tendrils of bones exiting his back and blood jetting from the wound. Droplets of bright-red blood splashed Jason’s cheek, hardening his resolve.

  He rubbed at the droplets absently with the back of his hand.

  It was only a matter of moments before the others perished. He didn’t have any choice. There was no other option.

  Jason began summoning Specialized Zombie, focusing on the corpses in the courtyard. Tendrils of dark energy wound around his arms and hands, thickening and growing with each second that ticked past. He channeled every ounce of mana he had left – everything that the meager mana potions had allowed him to recover. It wasn’t his full mana pool, but hopefully, it would be enough.

  As he finished casting, tentacles of darkness rocketed from his body, racing through the air and winding among the ivory bodies of the feral undead. As the energy reached the corpses of the Kin, dozens of his former citizens suddenly re-opened bleached white eyes – although no flicker of intelligence or life remained in their gaze. This was a small blessing as many of their bodies had been ravaged beyond redemption.

  Move but stay low and slow, Jason ordered his new minions.

  “What are you doing?” Cecil shouted from nearby, his eyes wide as he saw the reanimated bodies of the Kin begin to twitch and rise in the courtyard. Even the remaining soldiers on the line hesitated – watching as their fallen brethren began to slowly crawl and shift among the ghouls.

  Jason ignored the short engineer. He didn’t know what he could say that would explain what he was about to do. There wasn’t time. Instead, he turned to Eliza where she hovered by his side, helping to prop him up. “More… more mana potions,” he croaked out.

  The water mage nodded quickly, digging into her pack with a frantic look in her eye. She fumbled around for a moment, cursing to herself before yanking out a handful of jars. A moment later, she was stuffing the potions into his hand, and he was pouring their contents down his throat. He swallowed hard, giving his body a few precious seconds to absorb the energy. He needed just a little more time.

  Each moment cost them dearly.

  Jason watched – numb – as the feral undead pressed their attack, ignoring the newly-summoned corpses in the courtyard. Their attention was focused solely on the dense pockets of mana that still lingered in the air and the thin line of survivors protecting the keep. The line of Kin buckled under the attack, and the blood of more soldiers stained the ground.

  Morgan never quit. A feral skeleton ripped open the throat of a nearby soldier, sending him hurtling backward. The mage grabbed him with one of her arms, tossing him out of the way with surprising strength. Then she stepped into the pocket in the line, releasing multiple blasts of dark energy that sent the ghouls stumbling backward. Morgan surged into the enemy horde as rings of obsidian formed around her body. Only a second later, the dark mana exploded in a concussive blast, sending the ghouls toppling backward into each other and giving the defenders a brief respite.

  The mage had bought them a few precious seconds, but Jason couldn’t wait any longer. The creatures were already beginning to recover, and the blast of energy had drawn the attention of more of the feral undead lingering in the center of the market.

  This would have to be enough mana.

  “Get ready to take cover,” Jason grunted. Cecil simply stared at him in confusion, his gaze shifting back and forth between the undead and Jason. Then a lightbulb seemed to go off in his head.

  “Get down!” he screamed. “Everyone get down now!”

  Jason didn’t wait. He couldn’t wait.

  His hands began to wind through the gestures of Corpse Explosion, activating the spell’s secondary effect. He planned to detonate all his minions simultaneously. The zombies had crawled and dragged their ruined bodies into position, evenly spacing themselves out among the ghouls. A tooltip lingered in his peripheral vision, warning him that this would cost all of his mana. Before turning into a Shade, this had just left him weakened. Now, he couldn’t be sure if it would kill him or not. Despite how many times he had died in-game, the thought still made him hesitate, and his fingers slowed.

  Jason gritted his teeth and forced himself to continue. He didn’t have time to second-guess himself. Within only moments, he could feel the end of the spell nearing. The energy winding around his hands began to reach a critical mass as the last traces of his mana were funneled into the spell. The dark energy swept around him in a whirlwind, blocking his view of Kin and the endless sea of native undead.

  “I’m sorry,” Jason whispered.

  Then he completed the spell.

  A cascade of explosions rocked the marketplace – dark energy erupting from over a hundred zombies simultaneously. The blast was so intense that it blotted out the sky – sucking in what little light the occasional flash of lightning offered. As the explosions continued, the dark energy shredded the feral undead. Tendrils of mana ripped apart the bones that made up their bodies and filled the marketplace with a cloud of thick ivory dust.

  At the last second, the Abomination hurtled forward protectively, creating a pocket for the remaining defenders. The dark mana streamed around the monster’s malformed body, rocketing past the Kin that huddled behind the creature. However, there was a limit to what even the Abomination’s magically-reinforced endurance could bear. The blasts ripped away its decayed flesh, gore sloughing off its body in waves. As the energy began to peter out, the monster’s ivory frame was visible beneath its ruined skin. Then it slumped to the ground unmoving.

  Jason had been knocked off his feet by the blasts, and his ears were ringing – the high-pitch whine warring for dominance with the piercing pain that penetrated his skull. However, one thing was still clear to him. He was still alive – although, part of him was starting to wish he wasn’t.

  Corpse Explosion (Modified) Complete

  Your health has reached zero!

  Martyrdom activated.

  Jason could only bark out an incredulous laugh as he saw the notification in his combat log. The game had treated that as a selfless sacrifice? Destroying the remains of hundreds of his own people to save the few that remained?

  “Are… are you okay?” Eliza asked him nervously, her face hovering above him. She was already unstoppering another potion and raising it to his lips.

  “No. No, I’m not,” Jason said softly. “I haven’t been okay for a long time.”

  She just looked at him quizzically but held her tongue.

  As Jason’s headache receded once again, he managed to sit up on his own, pushing away Eliza’s offer to help. What he observed in the courtyard made his jaw go slack. The marketplace was covered in ivory dust and bone, dozens of craters evidencing where each of the zombies had detonated.
The feral horde had been reduced to a few dozen injured creatures. They scrambled around the marketplace helplessly, their limbs broken and fractured. Jason could see more running down the side streets, retreating to other parts of the city. The horde was broken, and the creatures’ frenzy had given way to self-preservation.

  The remaining Kin stood around Jason protectively – looking shell-shocked but very much alive. Their armor was broken and torn, each man and woman stained in a motley red and white as they stared at the carnage in the courtyard. They looked like they had just been through hell; Jason supposed that they had.

  With a grunt, he struggled back to his feet. The battlefield didn’t look any better standing. The buildings ringing the courtyard had been ravaged and were now little more than ruins. An almost endless number of bodies littered the former marketplace. All three barricades were now piles of rubble, the broken wooden splinters and the remains of the undead creating a series of macabre ramps into the courtyard.

  “Congratulations! I do believe we won!” Jerry suddenly shouted, throwing his arm around Jason’s shoulders. This earned him more than a few skeptical looks from the Kin nearby – who most certainly didn’t look like celebrating.

  “This is winning?” Jason wondered in a muted voice.

  “Well, I’ll admit the circumstances aren’t ideal,” Jerry added, his expression sobering. “It certainly cost us a great deal. But, if I’ve learned anything during my life, it’s to take a victory when it’s offered. There will be a time to mourn the price later.”

  Jason saw some wisdom in that he supposed. Although, it was a difficult pill to swallow in the face of their losses – and his incessant, pounding headache. He just wanted to sleep, and, at this point, he wasn’t certain if he cared whether he woke up again. Even as this thought crossed his mind, he was forced to discard it. There was still much to do. They needed to finish off the remaining ghouls and search for survivors. They also needed to alert the civilians hidden inside the keep. They could use a hand cleaning up this mess.