by Oliver Mayes
Wow, the situation was becoming more familiar by the second. Damien uncomfortably twisted under Magnitude’s grip to find his captor’s face contorting, as if even looking at Damien were a painful prospect. Which was all the more annoying coming from a guy making him eat dirt.
“Could you maybe offer to take your hand off my head? Or does sadism run in the family?”
Magnitude released him surprisingly quickly, allowing Damien to his feet. There was a new entity inside the dome: a Mana Wisp, the same as the ones Aetherius used for recording purposes.
“You can insult me as much as you want, but if you talk about Andrew again I’ll put my fist through your face.”
Damien opened his mouth to reply, only for Magnitude to stare up at the wisp and shout at it out of nowhere.
“No! It’s bad enough you want him alive. You can watch, but I’m handling it.”
Magnitude turned his attention back to Damien, looking extremely cross. The dwarf’s features naturally lent themselves to that particular emotion. Damien’s eyes darted from the Mana Wisp back to Magnitude. Someone else was watching. These must be the people Aetherius had been talking about. Damien chose not to acknowledge them. If he could get Magnitude mad enough, maybe he could speed this up by catalyzing his own death to get the killer in trouble with his teammates.
“Wow, two sadists and two anger management cases lined up in a neat little row. What a happy little family. I’m surprised you don’t get along better. Oh, wait. No I’m not.”
Threat of physical harm doesn’t mean much to someone actively trying to hasten their demise. Damien was hoping Magnitude could assist him in that regard, if he pushed the right buttons. The dwarf flared momentarily, his hands raising to pummel the earth. Unfortunately, whoever was talking to him must have said something severe, halting Magnitude in his tracks before he could achieve Damien’s goal. He crossed his arms in front of himself tightly, likely to prevent himself from killing Damien on a whim. Then he started passively intoning an offer as if he were reading it out from a script. More likely than not, it was coming directly from the mystery third party and Magnitude was just a mouthpiece.
“Here’s the deal. You’re not going to the Inner Circle any time soon. But, if today is the last time we see you here, we’ll instruct the Carlisle-Elite not to attack you. They can even help you, if you call for assistance. We can set that up. We’re increasing our patrols into the forest shortly. After that, it will become extremely difficult for you to exist. If you accept the terms, you’ll be able to keep making your streams in—”
Damien shot a hand into the air. When Magnitude stopped talking he immediately filled the gap.
“So your offer is that I help you repress the players in the forest, who have no EXP for me because of the player-killing format you’ve introduced to the zone. In exchange, the Carlisle-Elite, the only players who might be worthwhile targets, help me to help you achieve your goals. So once they’re all high level they can kill me anyway, like they did Andrew? No thanks.”
Magnitude tightened his arms across his midriff.
“It’s a good offer, Damien. You should take it. If it were up to me I’d make your life impossible. It wouldn’t be difficult. Fortunately for you, for reasons I don’t pretend to understand, my peers are genuinely concerned for your well-being.”
Damien had a good laugh at that.
“Yeah. I can really feel your concern. About as much concern as it turned out Aetherius had for me, when he managed to get me into this position.”
Magnitude sighed and stared down at the floor, then came back on a different tack.
“Do you know why Rising Tide was attacked by all the player-killers in the zone? I put on a special offer on the official Saga Online channel. Rising Tide players are currently worth five kills each toward my quest. I made the kills on them redeemable even after death, so killing two guarantees instant Carlisle-Elite membership and, with it, passage beyond the wall.”
Ah. So that’s why the players had attacked with such wild abandon, when before they’d been more concerned with their safety. That was undeniably a good reason to risk your life, especially if your current kill count toward the quest was low. Even if a player died in the process of killing a single Rising Tide player, it would cut the number of player kills required to join Magnitude’s guild in half.
“All I have to do is announce a deal and the whole forest comes running to protect the wall that’s fencing them in. They don’t want the wall to be destroyed. They want to be a part of it. That opportunity does not extend to you, due to your competition victory and your class. With a single message, I could put out an offer on you. Kill Daemien once, instant membership. I did the same for Andrew already, he’s having a rough time of it. Three deaths and counting. You’d hardly be able to play the game again. But I will refrain from posting such a message and allow you to go about your streaming in relative peace, if you stop making a nuisance of yourself. Otherwise, I’ll take great pleasure in stamping you out of existence.”
Now Damien had something to think about. If Magnitude were true to his word, this would offer him a relatively stable position in the forest to improve on his streaming activity. His foray into the forest earlier that day had been mostly successful until it was interrupted by Aetherius and the Carlisle-Elite. This deal would remove that problem. He’d be free to hunt the lower-level players as he saw fit, improve on his already successful strategies in the Frozen Forest and carve out a small, comfortable niche in the game from which to build his channel. Maybe, in time, someone else would resolve the Magnitude problem for him.
But that wasn’t what he really wanted. Even without Magnitude’s offer Damien could’ve decided to camp in the Frozen Forest of his own accord, but he hadn’t. He wanted to explore the new content and give his viewers something really interesting. He wanted to move away from player-killing, not to get forced back into it. He wanted a significant increase in power, the kind that only the world beyond the wall in general and Bartholomew’s quest in particular could offer.
Any offer Magnitude made him was specifically tailored to deny him that. It was also turning him into unpaid labor, helping him keep the number of players succeeding in the quest low, and thus the value of joining the Carlisle-Elite high, without reward. Magnitude was quite the spokesperson, to present such unfavorable terms as if they were both fair and benevolent while simultaneously showering him in condescension and threats.
That would not do.
“I pass. Thanks for your generous offer to acquiesce to your control and be grateful for it. I’m starting to see how Andrew turned out the way he did, if you fed him that warped logic long enough.”
Damien crouched down, his hands on his knees so that he could stare his captor in the face.
“Now. I’m pretty much sick of listening to your deluded, self-aggrandizing garbage, although I’m very happy to have all this recorded footage of you, revealing how you play everyone against each other for your own benefit. I need to upload it, so if you’d be so kind as to kill me I can go reveal what a conceited troll you are. Or I can just kill myself. It would be better than listening to you go on. Or you could let me go, in which case maybe I’ll keep the footage to myself. No promises, though, because you’re a massive jerk-off.”
Magnitude, shaking slightly as he stared Damien dead in the eye, opened his mouth to address the Mana Wisp.
“Did you get all that?...You saw it! I tried, and I’m not trying any harder than...really?”
And then, much as his younger brother had done earlier that day, Magnitude smiled big and broad.
“He doesn’t listen to me though, so you’ll have to tell him...sure. I’ll do it now.”
Magnitude’s eyes stopped staring through Damien and stared into him instead, his smile broadening still further till his beard was rising up his face on both sides. What was this miserable git suddenly so happy about? Magnitude spoke directly to Damien this time, and things got a whole lot weirder.
“Alright. Let’s remove this dome, shall we?”
Magnitude clapped his hands together and the dome crumbled into dust all around them, the flakes sinking into the ground as they made contact until all evidence of Damien’s subterranean prison was absorbed back into the landscape. Damien was nonplussed. He’d been hoping for a quick death and was not sure what to do with himself having been released.
“So I can go now, right?”
“Yeah! Yeah. You can go.”
Magnitude put his hand out and a purple tinged parchment appeared within it. He seemed completely carefree as he unraveled it, chatting amicably the whole while.
“Or you can stay. It doesn’t really matter. You’re no longer my responsibility.”
“I thought you were going to stamp me out of existence?”
“So did I, but this is much more satisfying. This guy might be the only person who hates you more than I do. I almost feel sorry for you. Almost. Have fun.”
And with that, he started to read. As he uttered a stream of unintelligible, guttural words, the scroll seemed to absorb the scarce light around it. It wasn’t long until the area surrounding Damien and Magnitude was as dark as if they still stood within the confines of the earthen dome. Darker than that. Darker than Damien could see through with his night vision. A set of glowing runes, much like those that appeared when Damien summoned his demonic minions, was slowly etching itself into the floor at Magnitude’s feet.
Someone was coming, and Damien had a choice to make. He could try to take on Magnitude and interrupt the summoning. The prospect of that working was pretty bleak, even without taking the rest of the Carlisle-Elite guild into account. Or, already on the other side of the wall with no enemies in sight, he could make a run for it.
Damien pegged it. His strategy was simple: first, he needed to get outside of Magnitude’s sensory range. Which was pretty large, if his earlier experiences were anything to go by. If he could just manage that, his innate stealth in the darkness should manage the rest.
He didn’t look back to see how Magnitude’s summoning was going. The snow behind the gate was in patches, and the environmental effect that had hampered stamina regeneration in the Frozen Forest was gone. That was a relief. Every second here would count.
Damien was forced to control himself when his stamina got to 25%, slowing to a jog. It was frustrating, but not as frustrating as stopping altogether would be. He was pretty fast, especially in darkness. He’d been running as fast as he could for a full minute when the valley walls at his peripheral vision fell away and he found himself, officially, in the Wastes. The area was even less vibrant than he’d expected. Nothing but arid plains and rocks as far as the eye could see, which wasn’t too far at this hour.
Damien had a lot of experience in choosing hiding places by this point. The best analogy he’d come up with was that picking a place to hide was a lot like picking a toilet cubicle. You don’t want to go for the nearest one, where everyone in the most desperate need goes, or else you’ll have a bad time. You also don’t want to pick the least convenient one, because that’s where everyone who’s avoiding the nearest one goes. You also don’t want to go with the second nearest or second least convenient options, for the same reason. Damien skirted past all the obvious bad choices and all the less obvious bad choices until he found an area that barely registered on his radar. He ducked in.
He was doing well, but he had an option now that would cement his achievement. He had to build a new Gateway. Then, as soon as it was done, he had to leave. Maybe he’d escape the pursuer Magnitude had put on his tail. Maybe not. But if he had a Gateway already set up, so long as it wasn’t found he’d be able to Portal back past the wall at his leisure.
He set Noigel to the task and started summoning more imps to assist him, increasing the construction speed every ten seconds. Noigel, in a rare display of restraint, kept his mutterings low but urgent as he directed new arrivals to their tasks. His charges echoed the sentiment, carving out rocks from the surrounding walls as quietly as they could with their razor-sharp claws. They were sacrificing haste for hush, and given the circumstances Damien could not fault them.
By the time he’d used up all seven of the souls he’d obtained from combat, including the one in his Sacrificial Dagger, the construction was only 10% complete. Even with Noigel urging them on, the constraint on their noise levels meant they were working only a little faster than normal speed. Damien joined them, lugging the blocks into the formation illustrated by the shaded area in the middle of the outcrop. He specifically ordered Noigel to have the imps focus on cutting rocks out rather than wasting energy on heavy lifting. The estimated construction time dropped. That might be enough.
Damien had gone out of his way to pick a far-flung, inconspicuous hiding place. There were only two possibilities he could see for his pursuer. Either they would run onward, not realizing their quarry was hiding rather than fleeing, or else they’d have no recourse except to check every single nook and cranny. He could’ve run in any direction, which meant the number of hiding places they’d have to check would be far greater than only those Damien had seen. Whichever of these options they chose, they were highly unlikely to find both Damien and his new Gateway. Once its construction was complete, the advantage would be decidedly his.
He started to relax a little bit. Magnitude had underestimated him. He was going to get away with it. Only twelve more blocks, or three and a half minutes, and his victory would be all but guaranteed.
“Miiiit-Suuuu-Keeee-Taaaa.”
Damien froze, the block he was hauling falling from his limp fingers, and slowly turned his head toward the sound. He hesitated to call it a voice. It didn’t sound humanoid enough. But no, the thing blocking the entrance was definitely humanoid. It had arms, legs, hands, feet and a face. That was where the resemblance to anything human ended. It was hideous. Its eyes were a pair of enormous black orbs, set above a slit nose and a gaping underbite full of oversized teeth. The jaw was framed on either side by fangs protruding from above and huge tusks from below.
As terrible as that visage was, it was the second mouth that gave Damien pause. Embedded in the creature’s distended torso, aligned over where the belly button would’ve been, was a perfectly circular wormhole that occupied the entirety of its stomach. It was lined with hundreds of serrated teeth, extending back into the creature’s guts. A long slimy tongue lolled out from the depths, the tip drawing itself around the ‘lips’ as it moistened them.
As Damien watched, the tongue withdrew back inside and the mouth gnashed, the circle closing before the teeth ground across each other. First from above, then from the sides, then from every other angle in an appalling hypnotic pattern. It was speaking. The syllables were long, lazy and languid, matching the movement of the elongated slug-like tongue that flicked around within its confines. The tone was gravelly, grating and deep, the rumblings of an endlessly hungering stomach.
“My eyes are up here, Daemien-chan.”
Jesus wept. Damien declined the invitation to make eye contact and made what limited assessment he could. The thing was mainly body, but the arms and legs were bulky enough to support it. It had no gear. It looked more like a dungeon boss than a player. However, it was speaking very much like he’d expect a player to speak.
Damien looked up at the head for a name. It was called ‘Archimonde’. A second name next to it in cursive script indicated a Saga Online-designated nickname: ‘Batara-Kala’. It was a player. With question marks in lieu of a level, indicating it was at least ten levels higher. Damien looked at the class name, expecting more question marks, and found something far worse. Archimonde was an occultist.
It appeared Magnitude had not been kidding when he had said he almost felt sorry for his worst enemy. Damien was starting to wish he’d read into Magnitude’s sudden carefree attitude a little more deeply.
Archimonde was blocking the only entrance. Damien might not be able to escape, but his imps could squeeze th
rough the gaps and he could Demon Gate to them afterwards. If he could get by, perhaps he could run. It did not look like Archimonde could move especially fast. Damien sent the message and his imps swept into the air, each of them aiming for the gaps. From behind Archimonde, creatures emerged to fill those gaps.
Two of them were dog-like and on fire, casting light over their surroundings. Damien had never seen hell hounds that weren’t his own before. That explained how he’d been found. Three more were small and more like monkeys, shambling forward on their knuckles to meet Damien’s host of imps. The two sets of imps were identical, except Archimonde’s did not have wings. The moment Damien saw his enemy’s minion composition, he knew he was doomed.
Archimonde compounded his dismay in two utterances, this time coming from the fanged mouth in its face. The voice was gruff and throaty, though nothing like as deep as the one that came directly from its intestines. It was only as it uttered the words that Damien realized Archimonde was an orc. Or at least it had been, once. Archimonde’s finger flicked between first one of Damien’s imps, then one of its own.
“Corruption. Imp-losion.”
One of Damien’s imps was ignited in black flames. Archimonde’s own imps barreled into the cave until one of them was picked and a portal opened, sucking Damien’s escape stratagem toward it. As the imps were pulled into each other, the black flames spread from the afflicted to encompass them all. Their screams barely lasted a moment until each and every one of them was ash.
Noigel had been further back and had avoided the carnage. He stayed high up, avoiding the gnashing teeth of the hounds as he flew for one of the meager gaps left by Archimonde’s considerable form. Another Corruption would’ve sufficed, but Noigel was not so fortunate. As he neared freedom, Archimonde’s tongue lashed out. It wrapped around Noigel before elastically drawing him into the teeth like a bungee cord. Noigel’s screams were the worst, more pathetic and desperate with each slow, measured bite. Damien was entirely alone.
