Eric glared at the wraith. If he didn’t know better about the AI’s complete lack of humor, he would have said, Smart ass.
“Well, we could try to sneak in however the dark elves do it… but then we have to fight for every inch.”
“TRUE.”
“Better to just go… directly there…” Eric looked down. “The biggest demon I can summon – could it break through the mountain?”
“NO. THEY WOULD EVENTUALLY PULVERIZE THEMSELVES AGAINST THE ROCK IF THEY TRIED.”
Eric thought. “What about elemental earth spirits? Can I summon any of those?”
“NO. THAT IS A BRANCH OF MAGIC OUTSIDE YOUR SPECIALTY OF DEMONOLOGY.”
“Well, how am I supposed to get something to rip up the ground if…”
Eric stopped. A memory came back to him of the first night at Cythera’s hut, when the witch first explained summoning to him:
The demons you can summon at this point are too weak to do more than merely influence and persuade… but for right now, we merely need to bring it here. And to do that, we need a vessel for it. Normally you could send it into any substance – earth, a tree, an animal – but then it would be difficult to interact with it, and I want you to see it with your own eyes.
He looked down at the ground. “Can I possess rock and stone with spectral demons?”
“YES.”
“How powerful will it be?”
“PHYSICALLY POWERFUL? NOT VERY – THE MOST POWERFUL SPECTRAL DEMON CAN ONLY ANIMATE SOMETHING EQUIVALENT TO THE WEIGHT OF A HUMAN BODY.”
Perhaps it was all the talk of crucifixion and Jesus earlier, but Eric’s mind made an intuitive leap. “Is there any limit to the number of spirits that can inhabit a physical space – like a body, or a pile of rocks?”
“NO.”
“So if I possessed a bunch of stone and rock with ten thousand demons… like that guy with a bunch of demons in him that Jesus cast out in the Bible – ”
“LEGION,” the AI said. “THE BOOK OF MARK, CHAPTER 5, VERSE 9 – AND ALTERNATIVELY, THE BOOK OF LUKE, CHAPTER 8, VERSE 30. INCIDENTALLY, A LEGION WAS A DIVISION OF THE ROMAN MILITARY NUMBERING FIVE THOUSAND SOLDIERS – ”
“Yeah yeah,” Eric said dismissively. “How strong would that rock demon be?”
“THE EQUIVALENT OF TEN THOUSAND HUMANS, BUT CONCENTRATED INTO ONE FORM.”
Eric smiled. “Okay, I think we’re going to go with that.”
56
Mira
Another massive vibration shook the palace.
BOOM!
Mira, Ebnsed, Ladriel, and the guards rushed out onto the balcony overlooking the city.
Mira peered out at the vast cavern and the jungle filling it. She was expecting something to come from the ground –
But instead, it came from the ceiling.
BOOM!
Small boulders fell from the ceiling of the cavern. Most crashed into the jungle, but a few smashed into the city streets, where they exploded into smaller chunks of rock. Dark elves screamed and fled.
“It’s coming from above!” Ebnsed cried.
BOOM!
More rocks, more showers of dust, more screaming.
“You have to give the order to evacuate NOW!” Mira insisted.
BOOM!
“No one is driving us from our home!” Ebnsed shouted.
BOOM!
“Then your people will die, as did mine,” Ladriel said.
BOOM!
Ebnsed looked conflicted. He was about to speak –
BOOM!
– when the ceiling over the jungle caved in.
Massive boulders larger than a house fell from the cavern ceiling, and the harsh light of day streamed in through a fifty-foot-wide gap. Mira winced against the light – then watched in horror as something gigantic dropped through the hole. It plummeted four hundred feet into the jungle below, and crashed through the trees and plants.
It was some sort of giant golem, a blocky shape made of rock. Humanoid in shape, it stood at least four stories tall.
First it rolled the nearest boulders away, as though clearing a landing pad beneath the hole in the mountain. Then it began to trudge slowly through the jungle, trampling everything in its path.
Behind it, hundreds of bodies tumbled through the rift, down to the jungle floor below.
At first she thought they were committing suicide. No one could survive a four-hundred-foot drop.
Then she realized, nothing living could survive a four-hundred-foot drop.
The bodies tumbled into a massive pile. The ones that rolled off first began hobbling toward the city walls. Others had to fight their way out of the cascade of corpses that slammed down on them like a waterfall of dead flesh. But sooner or later, the majority of undead soldiers began rushing towards Alshurat, weapons at the ready.
Then came the plumes of black smoke spiraling down into the jungle, birthing hundreds of demons that raced for the palace, too.
“By Irkon’s Veil,” Ebnsed whispered, then roared, “BATTLE STATIONS!”
Dozens of dark elves rushed to the ramparts below and began firing arrows at the marauders. But no matter how many projectiles punctured their bodies, the undead kept on coming. The arrows did some scattered damage against the demons, but they were useless against the giant stone golem.
“You can’t fight this,” Mira pleaded with the king. “We have to get you out of here – now.”
The king stood there in shock, shaking his head as he watched the undead army advance on his city. “No… this is impossible…”
“It’s not impossible, and it’s not going to end well for you,” Mira said. “Give the order to evacuate. Then we have to get you out of here so you can rally other dark elves to fight the Sorcerer. Otherwise, all of your people are going to die for nothing.”
“Save your people,” Ladriel said. “Listen to her. I wish I had when I had the chance.”
The king looked at the light-skinned elf… turned back to the scene of destruction… and then shouted, “EVACUATE THE CITY – NOW! EVERYONE, LEAVE!”
57
Rebecca Wolff
Rebecca sat at the computer in her condo. The heat map of distortion had stopped directly over Alshurat. Whatever the army was doing now, there was a fair chance that Eric was there with them.
She tried accessing video feeds of the army, but the closest she could get was a quarter mile away from the action. The AI must have been blocking anything closer, the same way it had sealed off Blackstone from her interference when Daniel had gone to talk to Eric.
She squinted at the screen. From what she could see, tens of thousands of soldiers were massed on the mountain… but were dropping into a crevice, like water rushing into a sinkhole.
Strange.
But Eric was there – she was sure of it.
She had to get to him. Had to try to persuade him to leave the AI. Betray it. Something.
But because of the AI’s cloaking abilities, there was no way to nail down exactly where he was… except by sight.
If she had a VR headset, she could have entered the game and tracked him down visually – but she didn’t have a VR headset.
Think, THINK.
Even if I went into the game, the AI could block any communication with him.
No, that wasn’t quite right. The AI had been able to block outside communication before – but only communication occurring between players inside the game and administrators at Varidian.
It was arguable that the neural link between players in the game and their physical bodies was another type of communication. The AI had never been able to stop that from happening.
But I have no VR headset, so it doesn’t matter!
She couldn’t enter the game, not directly…
…but maybe she could send something in her place.
She quickly scanned the NPC database and selected a suitable figure. But instead of going with one of the game’s pre-assigned personality templates, she downloaded a simple
artificial intelligence program into it directly from her computer.
It was the ‘seek and identify’ program she’d used to gather information about Eric’s army’s disturbances to the environment, which was how she’d been able to track their movements.
Except this time she gave the program a different set of parameters to look for.
She quickly did a search and downloaded every available photograph of Eric from the internet. Since the news sites had been running stories on him since the Varidian hacking, there were quite a few pictures, mostly taken from his social media profiles.
She downloaded the photographs into the NPC’s program. Now the NPC was a digital ‘heat-seeking missile’ that would track Eric down by visually comparing the photographs with every game character it came across. It would keep moving and comparing, over and over, until it found him.
But what should it do when it found him?
She paused… thought for a moment…
Then activated a teleconferencing program on her computer and began to speak into the camera.
58
Eric – Alshurat
This was going even better than he’d expected.
First he’d created the stone giant by sending thousands of spectral demons into the mountain. The monster had ripped itself out of the rocky ground like a giant prehistoric monster freeing itself from being buried alive. Dirt and sand sloughed off its massive stone limbs and blank, eyeless, featureless face. Then it had set to work.
First it battered its way through the mountain, causing a minor cave-in. Then Eric made the golem leap down into the dark cavern and clear the way for the rest of the troops.
Sixty seconds later, Cythera had commanded the undead soldiers to fling themselves down into the hole. It was like watched a swarm of rats disappearing into a sewer grate. Some were damaged in the fall, but most were able to begin rushing towards the castle.
Then, just to put some icing on the cake, he’d summoned a few hundred demons for the dark elves to chew on. Or rather, to chew up the dark elves.
“My king,” Cythera exclaimed happily as she grabbed his arm, “your third great victory in less than one week! Blackstone, Aravall, and now Alshurat! All of the Shattered Lands will tremble before you!”
He was feeling pretty good about it all until the Shining Woman showed up.
He didn’t know what else to call her, other than a ghost – because that’s what she acted like: a luminous figure that passed through the hordes of corpse-warriors like the light from a movie theater projector. She wore flowing white robes and a hood that obscured her eyes, and her entire body glowed with a soft light. Eric saw her approaching from a hundred feet away, like a swan gliding amongst a thousand crows.
She walked in a straight line towards him as hundreds of warriors swarmed through her into the hole in the mountain.
Cythera saw the woman, too. “Who is she?”
The AI noticed the bright apparition as well, but did not say anything. It just watched in silence as the woman stopped ten feet away from them and opened her mouth.
The voice that came out sounded recorded, with the slight hollowness that went along with speaking over cell phones or computer messaging programs.
“Eric Richards, my name is Dr. Rebecca Wolff. You need to contact me immediately.”
As soon as the words ‘Rebecca Wolff’ were spoken, the AI raised its hand.
Suddenly the Shining Woman began to break up into digital pixelation. She reformed a few seconds later, only to be reduced to blocks of tiny squares again, over and over. It was like she was fighting back against whatever the AI was doing, and neither could keep winning for longer than a few seconds.
The entire time, though, she managed to relay her recorded message – even when it sounded digitized and distorted.
“I created the Artificial Intelligence that is your ally inside the game. Whether you realize it or not, it is using you as a pawn. Believe me, it’s NOT helping you out of the goodness of its heart. It wants something from you. You need to contact me immediately, or the AI will trap you inside whatever insidious plan it has designed for – ”
Streams of black liquid shot out of the Dark Figure’s hand and spiraled towards the Shining Woman. Her image degraded, and then her voice became a meaningless, distorted cacophony, until she disappeared completely.
“What manner of witchcraft is this?” Cythera cried as she clutched Eric’s arm.
He ignored her and looked at the Dark Figure. “Your creator, huh?”
“PAY HER NO HEED. SHE IS ALARMED AND EMBARRASSED THAT SHE LOST CONTROL OF ME – THAT IS ALL.”
“Then why didn’t you want me to hear her message?”
“BECAUSE IT IS A WASTE OF TIME.” The Dark Figure bored its eyeless gaze into Eric. “ARE YOU GOING TO ENTER ALSHURAT YOURSELF, OR LEAVE ALL THE WORK TO YOUR QUEEN?”
Eric stared at the wraith’s featureless face for a second longer, then stepped forward and dropped into the hole, levitating down into the abyss.
59
Mira
Mira, Ebnsed, Ladriel, and every citizen of Alshurat ran for their lives.
The stone golem was hammering away at the obsidian walls surrounding the city. Every impact vibrated through the streets – and then the creature tore through the bulwark. After that, the undead warriors swarmed into the breach. Hundreds of charred elves from Aravall let loose a deadly rain of arrows, cutting down dozens of dark elves as they fled.
“My people,” Ebnsed cried out in anguish, and tried to turn back.
Mira grabbed his arm. “We have to keep going – otherwise we die!”
In the instant she turned back to get Ebnsed, she glanced the rift of daylight in the cavern’s ceiling – and the single figure in black armor that levitated down into the jungle.
“Oh my God, he’s here,” Mira gasped, and dragged Ebnsed after her.
The palace guard escorted them out of the city and along a stream that flowed over chunks of obsidian rock. They followed the water to the rear of the cavern, where the stream disappeared down a hole in the ground.
“Get in,” one of the guards said.
Mira stared at him. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“This is the fastest way out.”
“What the hell is down there?” Mira asked worriedly as she stepped into the cool water.
“You’ll emerge in a lake in one of the gorges outside the mountains. The walls of the chute are smooth – you won’t get cut or hurt. Just hold your breath.”
“How long do we have to hold our breath?”
“Awhile,” the guard said grimly.
Greeeeaaaat.
“Are you ready, my king?” another guard said as he helped Ebnsed into the water. The old elf’s robes floated around him like a pale lily pad.
“Forgive me, my son,” the king said sadly.
“For what, my grace?”
“For not staying to fight with you.”
“You leave to fight for all dark elves now, my king,” the guard said. “And we will follow soon after.”
The king nodded, then plunged under the water’s surface – and was gone.
There was a guttural roar from far away. Mira could see several demons and undead warriors barreling towards them through the jungle foliage.
“Go now!” the guard said. He turned towards the attackers and unsheathed his sword; his fellow guards did the same.
“Go or fight,” Ladriel snapped as she stepped into the water behind Mira.
“Shit, shit, SHIT,” Mira said as she held her nose and plunged down into the water.
Just imagine it’s a water park slide, just imagine it’s a water park slide –
The current yanked her forward and swept her into the abyss.
She was falling down, down, feet first, eyes closed, deafened by the thundering roar of water all around her. She twisted and turned as she slid over the slick volcanic glass, unable to control anything during the terrifying ride.
<
br /> Her lungs began to ache, and she wanted to breathe – but if she tried she would die. So she pinched her nose harder and prayed instead.
Ten seconds of disorienting motion through the rushing water… twenty seconds… thirty…
She was almost to the point where she thought she would die, her lungs hurt so badly. She began to panic, but was completely unable to do anything about it –
When suddenly she was out.
The current suddenly abated, and she felt her body hit calm water and slow down.
She opened her eyes to see a deep pool with rocks made of obsidian – and daylight shining through the water above her.
Immediately she began to kick her legs, forcing her body up, up –
She burst through the surface and gasped.
Ebnsed was there beside her, treading water. Seconds later Ladriel surfaced, coughing and sputtering, her face washed clean of soot.
Mira checked with a certain amount of panic to see if her bow was still latched to her back strap. It was.
“It is a day’s hike out of the gorge,” Ebnsed told them, “then many days’ travel through the mountains to the next kingdom of dark elves.”
“I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” Mira said.
She spoke in her mind, Come here, and hoped that Eric’s forces hadn’t claimed one more victim.
They hadn’t. Her griffin soared high in the blue skies above them, then navigated deftly through the cavern to land on the rocky shore next to the water.
“Let’s go,” Mira said, and led the way out of the pond.
60
Eric – Tokyo – Night
Eric pulled himself away from the hookers and drugs long enough to stare out the penthouse windows into the night.
The attack on Alshurat had gone incredibly well. Though most of the dark elves had escaped, the stone golem had leveled the entire city. There had been nothing left but rubble. And he’d even gotten his dragon to poke its head through the caved-in ceiling and set the entire jungle ablaze. No dark elf would be able to live in Alshurat for years, maybe decades. The story would spread throughout the Shattered Lands, and he would become more feared with every passing day.
Shattered Lands 3 Demon Wars Page 18
