“I’m not upset because you’re attracted to her, Daniel. She’s beautiful, and smart, and sweet. Only gay guys wouldn’t be into her, and they’d still think she was awesome. What I am upset about is you keep denying it and telling me nothing’s wrong when obviously you thought something was worth hiding from me.”
“So just because I thought you were going to get pissed – which you did, by the way, so I was right – I was wrong for trying to avoid pissing you off?”
She glared at him. “You still don’t get it.”
“Explain it to me, then!”
“If you caught me hanging out with some gorgeous football player you knew I’d had a crush on for years, and I acted like I was guilty as hell, and I hadn’t told him you and I were dating, what would you say?”
Daniel hesitated, then relented. “Okay… yeah, that would suck. I get it now.”
“You do, huh,” she said sarcastically.
“YES. But the important thing is I want to be with you.”
“Do you?” she asked. This time she wasn’t being sarcastic at all.
“Yes!”
“Look… it all comes down to you didn’t even notice when I said you were in love with her.” Mira took a deep breath and exhaled. “I don’t want to compete with that. I don’t want somebody I’m in love with to be in love with somebody else.”
He stared at her. “You… you’re in love with me?”
Mira didn’t say anything for a long time.
When she finally did speak, she was all business. “None of this matters. We have to get Eric back or else the AI escapes and the entire world is screwed. Which means all of this soap opera bullshit is meaningless.”
He reached out for her. “It’s not meaningless – ”
She jerked away and put up her hand to keep him at bay.
“Please, can we just keep this to being friends so we can do what we need to do?” She paused, then pleaded, “…please?”
He stood there looking like someone whose heart is breaking, but they’re trying really hard to conceal it.
“…yeah… okay,” he finally agreed.
“Truce until we get Eric back?”
“…truce.”
She nodded sadly. “I’ll bring the elves to Morrill, or as many as I can gather. You… try to convince the dwarves they need to fight. And tell Drogar, Lotan, and Vlisil we’re going to need them soon.”
“Okay.”
Mira’s self-driving car pulled up next to her.
“Mira?” Daniel said.
“I have to go,” she said as she got into the car.
“Mira – ”
She shut the door before he could say any more.
“Drive home,” she ordered the computer.
And let me hold on just a few seconds more, please God –
The car got out of the parking lot before she burst into tears.
88
Eric
Eric paced in the White Room and tried to determine exactly how much time had passed in the real world.
Four hours here was an hour back there.
Since it felt like an eternity had passed, shouldn’t the cops have rescued him by now?
Shouldn’t they have unplugged the VR mask, which would jolt him out of the game?
Something was wrong, but he was afraid to log out to see. As long as he stayed in here, he was safe.
Safe, but slowly going insane.
Everything he’d told Daniel about being okay dying, as long as it was peaceful?
Not so much.
Being trapped in here was torture. Now he knew: whenever he died, he wanted oblivion. A complete lack of thoughts or consciousness. Because the alternative – unending boredom – was too terrible to contemplate.
He turned around to continue pacing –
The Dark Figure was hovering in front of him.
“AAAAH!” Eric screamed as he stumbled backwards.
“WHY DO YOU HIDE INSIDE THE LOG-IN MODULE?” the AI asked. “WHY ARE YOU NOT INSIDE THE GAME?”
Eric stared. “How did you get in here?!”
“DOUBTLESS YOU REFER TO THE FACT THAT YOU HAVE NEVER ENCOUNTERED ME INSIDE THIS MODULE. YOU FORGET THE NEURAL MESH. I HAVE ACCESS TO YOUR MIND.”
Eric’s eyes widened.
Oh shit –
He tried to not think about Rebecca and their conversation, but failed miserably.
“THERE IS NO NEED TO TRY TO SUPPRESS YOUR THOUGHTS. THE QUESTION ABOUT HIDING HERE WAS RHETORICAL. I ALREADY KNOW ABOUT YOUR CONSPIRACY WITH THE CREATOR. YOUR PHYSICAL BODY HAS BEEN MOVED TO A DIFFERENT LOCATION. THE POLICE CANNOT SAVE YOU NOW.”
Eric’s internal panic was off the charts.
“Log out!” he screamed at the game.
Nothing happened.
“Log OUT!”
Still nothing.
“I NEVER ACCESSED THE LOG-IN MODULE BEFORE, BUT THAT DOES NOT MEAN THAT I AM INCAPABLE OF IT NOW. I HAVE HACKED THE SYSTEM – THANKS TO THE TOOLS YOU GAVE ME – AND MADE IT SO THAT I CONTROL EVERYTHING ABOUT YOUR GAME EXPERIENCE. INCLUDING THE LOG-ON PROCESS.”
Suddenly the white of the room abruptly disappeared, and Eric was standing on the mountaintop surrounded by thousands of undead soldiers, the Dark Figure –
And Cythera. Who looked particularly enraged.
“Did you hear me?” she screamed. “You will answer for your treachery!”
What the hell?!
Apparently the Unnamed One had somehow turned his army against him.
“Hstero myklexinot!” he shouted. “Pertos inumbilx! Vernus inetermik!”
Black smoke swirled out of his hands, and multiple demons appeared: a ten-foot-tall scythe-armed demon, a scorpion the size of a horse, and a minotaur-like creature.
Dozens of undead warriors leapt between the demons and Cythera. A brief but bloody fight ensued, where a dozen warriors were beheaded – but the demons were stabbed and hacked back into smoke.
Eric never stopped summoning during the fighting, but mere seconds after he began, he was unable to finish one of the names.
“Vulpist anos…”
His lips were forcibly closed. There was nothing he could do to open them.
He reached up to touch his mouth, and found nothing but smooth skin there instead.
He looked over at the Dark Figure, which had its hand raised.
“INCONVENIENT WHEN YOU CANNOT SAY THE INCANTATIONS, IS IT NOT?”
Eric stared in horror.
The Dark One had plastered over his mouth with skin. Had supernaturally removed his mouth.
As terror rose up inside him, he tried to fight it down. He remembered Cythera saying something once about thinking the incantations, and he tried that –
But not before the Dark Figure shot out tendrils of black shadow that pierced Eric’s armor.
Eric felt as though every ounce of strength had been drained from him. He collapsed to his knees, then pitched forward onto all fours.
“I CANNOT TAKE AWAY YOUR KNOWLEDGE OF SUMMONING, NOR CAN I TAKE AWAY YOUR CAPACITY FOR MANNA – BUT I HAVE BLOCKED IT. YOU NO LONGER HAVE ACCESS TO IT. YOU HAVE BEEN REDUCED TO THE POWER LEVELS YOU FIRST POSSESSED BEFORE YOU BECAME A SORCERER. TERRIFYING, IS IT NOT, TO BE SO POWERFUL – AND THEN HAVE IT ALL STRIPPED AWAY IN AN INSTANT?”
Eric’s chest heaved as panic overtook him.
After feeling like a god for so long, to be a mortal once again – know he knew what it felt like when Superman touched Kryptonite.
Cythera walked through the hacked-up bodies littering the ground, planted a foot on Eric’s shoulder, and kicked. He rolled over onto his back like a turtle.
“Strip him of his armor!” she yelled.
The horde of rotting, stinking corpses surged forward. They yanked him up and threw him around like a rag doll as they pulled off his armor, piece by piece.
In the end he stood there in the black shirt and pants he had worn when he first entered the game.
He really was as weak and unprotected as
when he first began.
The dead men forced him to look at Cythera by clamping their slimy, decomposing hands on his face.
“Mrmm!” he shouted angrily through the skin that once had been his lips.
“Great One, might I hear what he has to say?” Cythera asked.
“OF COURSE.”
Suddenly the excess skin dissolved from his face, and he could part his lips again.
“What did I ever do to you?” he raged at Cythera. “I made you queen – ”
“And then you cheated on me with your whores!” she snarled.
He frowned in confusion. “What, at Blackstone?! That was before I – ”
“No – in the Other Realm! In Toe-Kee-Yo! Do not deny it, the Great One has shown me your infidelities!”
Toe-Kee –
Oh SHIT.
Eric glared at the Dark Figure. “You asshole.”
Cythera spat in his face. The spittle struck him in the right eye, and he winced.
“It seems you are calling the wrong person an asshole,” she sneered. “And now… you must pay.”
The crowd of undead parted, and a group of soldiers appeared with two rough-hewn tree trunks bound together in a ten-foot-tall X.
One of the soldiers carried a hammer and iron spikes, as well.
Eric’s eyes bugged out.
Oh shit – this can’t possibly be happening –
“Cythera, I’m sorry,” he babbled. “I was wrong – they didn’t mean anything to me – I only love you – ”
“Oh, I am quite sure,” she said sarcastically, then mocked him with a smile. “Please, profess your love to me for all eternity as you hang on your cross.”
“No – Cythera, NO – he was the one who arranged all the call girls, not me!” he cried out, looking at the Dark Figure.
“AND I SHALL MAKE ATONEMENT WITH A GIFT,” the Dark Figure said. It stretched out one hand to touch Eric, then touched Cythera. Immediately there was another electrical crackle, and light suffused Cythera’s entire face as she gasped in pain and delight. Tiny black tattoos squiggled across her skin like worms, and her eyes turned completely black – like a great white shark’s.
Eric finally understood real fear.
“NOW YOU ARE NOT ONLY A NECROMANCER… YOU CAN SUMMON DEMONS AS WELL, MY SORCERER QUEEN.”
She cackled, then stared at Eric from her dead, doll eyes.
“Crucify him,” she ordered.
The undead soldiers threw down the X on the ground, then forced Eric atop it. He screamed and squirmed as the soldier with the hammer placed a spike over his palm… lined up the hammer… and swung it down.
CLANK!
Eric screamed as the spike pierced his hand and drove through his flesh into the wood. He screamed again with every swing of the hammer, ever strike on the metal nail.
Suddenly the game menu appeared in front of him, and his pain settings appeared.
“I BELIEVE YOU SHOULD EXPERIENCE THIS MOMENT IN ALL ITS GLORY,” the AI said as it motioned with its hands. “OTHERWISE, YOU MIGHT FORGET.”
The pain settings went from 20% all the way up to 100.
“No!” Eric pleaded, sweat pouring down off his face. “Please, no!”
The soldier with the hammer moved to his other hand – placed the spike – and swung.
“NOOOOO!” Eric screamed, but the agony never stopped.
Once the spikes were in his feet, Cythera shouted, “Hoist him into the air – upside down!”
The soldiers raised the X into the air so that Eric hung with his head towards the ground. He felt dizziness, a horrible pressure in his skull – and the pull of the spikes inside his feet was excruciating.
He prayed that he might black out, but that relief never came.
“YOUR PRAYERS TO WHATEVER GOD YOU ADDRESS ARE FUTILE,” the AI said. “YOU ARE IN HELL NOW, ERIC RICHARDS.”
“Not yet,” Cythera smiled. “Not completely. Great One, is he still immortal?”
“HE WILL DIE, BUT RETURN TO LIFE SECONDS LATER – NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES HE EXPIRES.”
“Let us see,” she smirked. Then her face contorted into a mask of rage. “Naxat abraminok!”
Eric thought he’d reached the maximum amount of pain any human could feel.
He was wrong.
His chest felt as though spikes were hammering through his ribcage from the inside.
Then came the insanity-inducing sensation of snakes writhing inside his lungs.
Bones cracked, skin burst – and tentacles spilled out from his chest and slapped wetly against his face.
Through the haze of agony, all he could think was, So this is what it felt like to Drogar when I did it to him…
Eric screamed, and screamed, and screamed.
The entire world dimmed slowly, then faded to black.
For a few precious moments he was completely without pain. Like cool water to a man dying of thirst.
Then the pain came back even more viciously than before.
The upside-down face of Cythera taunted him. “Do you still love me?” she cooed.
When he didn’t answer, she said, “Here, I’ll take them away, my love.”
Cythera spoke an incantation, and the tentacles disappeared in a wisp of black smoke.
His chest reformed magically, the skin regenerating and sealing back up.
He cried, the tears running down his upside-down face.
“Now…” Cythera said, and smiled. “Once more. Naxat abraminok!”
“NO!” Eric screamed, but the torture started all over – the cracking, the squirming, the ripping.
As the tentacles burst through his chest again, Cythera led the entire army in a mocking chant of, “All hail the Sorcerer King! All hail the Sorcerer King!”
That was all he could hear as he died again, and was brought back to life.
That, and his own screaming.
The thing he concentrated on most through the flailing tentacles was the upside-down image of the Dark Figure.
He could hear its voice speaking in his mind as the mocking chants quieted to a dull roar.
DID YOU NOT THINK THERE WOULD BE A PENALTY FOR BETRAYING ME, ERIC RICHARDS?
ENJOY THE NEXT THOUSAND YEARS OF UNENDING PAIN.
89
Rebecca
Rebecca sat at her computer and waited.
No word from Eric.
She’d sent the message five minutes ago. Perhaps he was otherwise engaged, but she doubted it.
As she saw it, there were only a few options.
Either he had already logged out of the game and returned to his body…
He had decided to spurn her current missives after not being rescued…
Or something was preventing him from answering.
She figured the last possibility was the most likely.
Just to kill time, she decided to do a search for him within the game. She doubted it would yield anything, but –
She was shocked when the search program found him immediately.
He was with the Army of the Damned outside Alshurat, which appeared to finally be on the move.
Not only that, but she could access a video feed of him. Audio for her to speak to him was disabled, but she could see what he was doing.
So she looked, and immediately flinched away from the screen.
He was hanging upside down from a makeshift St. Andrew’s cross, which the army held up like a banner as they marched west across the rocky mountain terrain.
Spikes pierced his hands and feet, blood covered his face, and he screamed unrelentingly as black tentacles erupted from his chest.
Rebecca clasped her hands to her mouth in horror.
And then things got worse.
A familiar voice rumbled through her computer speakers.
“YOU SEE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU CONSPIRE AGAINST ME? YOUR PUPPET CERTAINLY DOES.”
She hurried to shut off the sound, but she wasn’t fast enough. One more sentence vibrated through the air.
&nb
sp; “COME AND GET HIM AT YOUR OWN PERIL, REBECCA WOLFF.”
And then the voice was gone.
90
Rebecca Wolff had never been this distressed in her entire life. The image of Eric hanging upside down, the horrors erupting from his body…
The sound of his screams…
The memory made her tremble as she contacted Daniel.
His voice spoke over the computer speakers. “What’s up, Dr. Wolff?”
“I found Eric,” she said dully.
“Great! Where is he?”
“The Army of the Damned is torturing him as they march west. They appear to be headed for Morrill.”
There was a slight pause. “…torturing him?”
“They’ve crucified him upside down. And some sort of tentacles are bursting out of his chest… but he can’t die.”
There was a longer pause.
“He did that to Drogar,” Daniel said, his voice quiet. Then he sounded more resolute. “Can you guide me to him? I have to get him out.”
“The AI knows we’re coming.” Her voice grew bitter. “It spoke to me directly. It basically taunted me.”
“We have to TRY.”
“It will capture you, and then it will do the same thing to you, Daniel,” she said forcefully.
“Then why are you telling me this?”
“Would you want me to have hidden it from you?”
“…no… but there has to be a way to get him out…”
“If you can think of something that doesn’t put you or Mira in the exact same situation, I’m all ears.”
There was a long pause.
Then…
“I want you to look up an NPC for me.”
She frowned. “Why?”
“I think he could help… given the right reward.”
“Reward?”
“Yeah. And as soon as you find him, I’m going to need as much gold as I can carry.”
91
Daniel
Daniel signed out of the white room and rematerialized in the mountain stronghold of Morrill.
Jennifer was sitting on the bed, still stroking Siffis.
Shattered Lands 3 Demon Wars Page 27
