London Underground: An Unofficial Legend of The Secret World (Unofficial Legends of The Secret World Book 2)

by Blodwedd Mallory

  It turned into a series of industrial walls, cordoning us off from the greater night landscape. I could see the inky sky peppered with stars above us—we were clearly outside, but the area around the well was blocked off in some fashion. On the north end in front of us was a wooden and chain-link exit, but the gates were closed. I could see lighting on the landscape beyond the gate. I wondered if that was Stonehenge itself, all lit up.

  Sevenoir shimmered into the well behind me, and I stepped forward to give him a little room. Or at least I thought it was Sevenoir.

  Gone were the bunny ears and the leather jacket and blue jeans. Instead, he was encased head-to-toe in a white leather uniform of sorts, with deep red accents on the shoulders and arms. There were two gold stripes on his right sleeve and a white four-armed cross over his heart on the dark red background. The uniform had a white hood with a red stripe edged in gold, and he was wearing a white mask, like a disguised reveler from Carnivàle. He had white leather gloves covering both hands, and his weapons were now prominently displayed—an assault rifle on his back and an elemental focus on his hip.

  I looked over at Zamira, who was still holding my hand and saw she was in a similar get-up, although hers had more gold on the uniform overall.

  Drenneth was standing to our left and was wearing a full suit of stylized armor, not unlike that of the mysterious man I’d seen at the review panel. Drenneth’s armor was gray and dark red, with shining gold highlights on the shoulder guards, chest covering, and leg protection covering the tops of his thighs. He had a red hood, and a face guard with eye slits with the four-armed cross emblazoned on top. His sword hung at his waist. He pushed his mask up while we waited.

  Zamira pushed up her own mask and opened her backpack. She pulled out a white and dark red uniform and handed it to me, before setting the backpack at the side of the well. “Since you haven’t got one of your own yet, I’ll let you use one of mine.”

  I stared at her, my mouth agape. “What is happening here? How did you suddenly change into these costumes?”

  “Practice, and they’re not costumes, they’re uniforms,” Zamira said with a wry grin. “Sorry for the trick. This is the Secret War, Wedd. It’s a scrimmage of sorts—us against the Dragon and Illuminati here at Stonehenge tonight. It starts in just a few minutes. Get dressed.”

  My face went red. Trick indeed. What had I gotten myself into? I was a little mad at Zamira for her sneakiness, but I was also excited to see what the Secret War was all about. It couldn’t be too dangerous if they all were here to do it.

  I set my backpack on the ground near the wall of the enclosure and quickly pulled the uniform on over my jeans and T-shirt. Zamira’s boots were too big for me, so I left my own hiking boots on, pulling the uniform pants down best as I could to make do. I stuffed her boots into my backpack and pulled out my blood and chaos foci.

  “Drenneth’s going to be our ‘tank,’” Zamira continued, “which means he’s going to try to hold their attention and take damage, leaving the rest of us free to deal damage to the other teams.”

  “Here’s hoping we get a fifth team member or it will be over quick enough,” Sevenoir grumbled.

  A scoreboard suddenly lit up over the gate at the north end of the enclosure, with a clock timer and three icons—the Illuminati blue triangle, the Dragon green circle, and the four-armed red cross of the Templars. The scores, at the moment, were all zero.

  “Here’s the strategy, Wedd,” Zamira said. “We’re going to all run out there in a minute and start the match. We have to hold the center of the henge, like King of the Hill. Whatever you do, try to stay inside the inner circle the whole time. It’s how we make points, and it’s how we’ll win the match. You can dodge behind the stones temporarily if you need to get out of the crossfire, but stay close to Drenneth. He’ll help protect you. Sevenoir and I will be working to deal damage to the other teams and moving around a lot.”

  I heard a shout across the field, presumably coming from one of the other teams. Drenneth grumbled under his breath, while Sevenoir shouted back in return.

  “We’ll see who kicks whose ass this time, Lurdtz,” he yelled.

  “You know them?” I asked Sevenoir.

  “Oh yeah, there are definitely Dragon and Illuminati we see on a regular basis here. Some of them are a good challenge. Others just have big mouths.”

  “How do we fight them without hurting them?” I asked.

  Zamira shook her head slightly and gave me a strange look. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, is it like flag football, where you pull off a flag or something?”

  “Nope,” Sevenoir said definitively, and threw back his head and laughed. “You really fight the other team. You’ll experience anima exhaustion. Maybe multiple times during the fifteen minutes of the match, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  My face filled with alarm. I had suffered anima exhaustion back at Innsmouth Academy, and it was a devastating experience. The idea of doing it for sport seemed outrageous. I edged away from them both toward the anima well. Maybe it wasn’t too late to leave this place if I could figure out how the well worked.

  “If you back out now, we’ll be short two team members, which almost certainly means we’ll lose. The rest of the groups all have five members on their teams,” Zamira said. I scowled at her. I didn’t like being pushed into this at all.

  Sevenoir pushed up his mask and faced me. “Look, Wedd, the point of this is to hone our fighting skills and to learn not to be afraid of ‘death.’ As Bees, we don’t die anymore, and while anima exhaustion is unpleasant, it’s a whole lot better than the alternative. To be really effective agents out in the field, we have to run toward danger. The Secret War gives us a chance to pit our skills against other agents to know where we stand and to see other fighting techniques and approaches. Plus, at the end of the day, it’s just good fun.”

  Before I could respond, I heard the swoosh of the well behind me as my teammates cheered. Finally, a fifth person was here to join our team.

  He was dressed in a uniform as well, but it was different than the others. He was wearing a white hood, but the white mask covering his face protruded in front into a beak, like a plague doctor mask. He had a black and gray harness with a supply pack, a white and red jacket and pants, red gloves, and black boots trimmed with gold. He popped up his mask and turned to the group.

  “Hey, HolloPoint,” Drenneth called. “Great! That makes five for the team, and we have a healer.”

  HolloPoint gave Drenneth a high five and said hello to Zamira and Sevenoir. They introduced me, and I gave a small wave.

  A woman’s voice came over a public announcement system. “It’s 12:08 a.m. United Kingdom Time. The game is starting in 60 seconds.”

  “It’s time.” Drenneth nodded to the group and pulled his mask down. The rest of us followed suit.

  “It’s almost Solstice,” Sevenoir said, rubbing his hands together with poorly disguised glee.

  “Who is that speaking?” I asked.

  “That’s an adjudicator from the Council of Venice,” Zamira explained. “They’re here as neutral observers to make sure the rules are followed and things don’t get out of hand. They make certain the teams are on equal footing.”

  Alrighty, then. I wasn’t sure what to think about this. I was nervous and excited, but uneasy about what was ahead. My new friends seemed happy and enthused about the coming match.

  “The game is starting in 30 seconds.”

  Argh. I was running out of time.

  HolloPoint was wearing fist weapons and began sharpening them with a loud twang. I could feel anima radiating from the metal claws. I realized I’d better figure out what spells I was going to use.

  Since this was a match against multiple players, I figured I’d choose my chaos and blood spells for broad hitting attacks. I could bring my dread sigil attack, and perhaps a runic hex. It would help heal me slightly while doing damage to the combatants I hit with it. But I’d
use chaos spells for my base. Turmoil would be my primary attack, with schism as a follow-up. Entropy would increase the damage I did. And of course, I could unleash pandemonium to stop multiple attackers at once by throwing them all to the ground.

  I could see the appeal of thinking through how best to attack and protect oneself from an unknown type of enemy. My experience up until now had been mainly against the known enemies at Innsmouth Academy. This was a whole different ball game.

  But at last, I was ready to go, and not a minute too soon.

  “The game is starting in 10 seconds.” The announcer’s voice cut through my thoughts, and I took in a deep, fortifying breath.

  “Remember, Wedd,” Zamira said, “stick with Drenneth. He’ll help protect you until you get your bearings.”

  “The game is starting.”

  The gates swung open and our team ran through them onto the field. I tried not to gawk as we jogged across the grassy expanse toward the massive sarsen stones of Stonehenge. Of course, I’d seen pictures of the famous monument but had never been this close. The larger stones comprised an outer ring, and they loomed over us as we approached them. A broad fountain of gold anima energy streamed out from the middle of the monument. I could see an illuminated blue triangle roughly 120 degrees to the right of where we entered and a similar green circle 120 degrees to the left. That must be where the other teams entered.

  Drenneth charged forward, headed to the center inside the first circle of stones. I followed him closely, trying to keep up, as he dodged around a smaller set of bluestones set inside the greater circle. These varied in height, but were only about as tall as a person, compared to the 30-foot-tall sarsen stones.

  Zamira drew her pistols and peered around one of them at the tangle of bodies in the middle, while Sevenoir strafed to an open area on the right, firing regular bursts with his assault rifle. Drenneth entered the melee swinging his sword around him in a broad circle, hitting the green and blue uniformed combatants like a truck. I did my best to follow Drenneth, careful to stay out of his swing, kicking with my legs to create turmoil.

  I felt a sharp pain in my back and realized I’d been hit by a shot from a sniper. HolloPoint sharpened his fist weapon releasing anima, and I felt a cool soothing as he healed my wound.

  OK, this was definitely different.

  I turned to see who’d shot at me and saw a gas-mask-wearing blue-suit Illuminati just as another bullet hit me in the chest. Ouch! Thankfully it was stopped by the armor of my uniform, but that hurt!

  Argh. I was a sitting duck out here in the middle, and I was going to give a little back to that guy. I ran toward the sniper, leaving the center of the circle, trying to reach him with my chaos spells to return fire.

  “Remember! Stay in the center,” Zamira yelled at me. “Don’t get lured away.”

  I broke off the chase, and he turned again toward me and shot me at range, this time hitting my leg. I stumbled and yelled as pain seared my nervous system. I was standing between the outer circle and inner circles with no place to hide. One of his Illuminati teammates turned and hit me with a hammer knocking me up in the air and flat on my back. I lay there, struggling for breath, pain searing my nerves. Beside me, I could see a fighter in a green uniform in the same spot. She rolled to her feet and struck me with a blood spell, maleficium, I think. The damage was too high. I reached anima exhaustion and collapsed on the field.

  With a whoosh, I found myself ported—reassembled? resurrected?—to the anima well where we started the match. I stood there in the golden glow of the tingling anima energy, trying to make sense of what I was feeling. I could tell that I’d been hurt, but it was gone now, and the pain was like a distant memory.

  The gates to the area were shut, and I stood there, shaking out my hands and my legs, grimacing with the memory of the damage that I couldn’t feel any more. Endorphins flowed through me. My body’s relief at being out of pain was profound, like I’d just had a shot of fast-acting painkillers.

  It was much harder to adapt to anima exhaustion mentally than physically, it seemed. I remembered vividly what it felt like being shot, cursed, and hit with a hammer. and that was making it very hard to want to go experience it again. I looked around for an exit.

  Next to me, HolloPoint resurrected in the well with a whoosh, distracting me.

  “Bastards ganged up on me,” he said with disgust. “They locked me down so I couldn’t heal.”

  In front of us, the gates to the field opened again, and I reluctantly followed HolloPoint back out to the fight. We crossed the area rapidly, and I could see Zamira once again hiding behind one of the rocks of the inner circle, diving out to fire her pistols, and then returning to safety. Sevenoir was firing his assault rifle at the Dragon team member who was dressed in armor like Drenneth’s.

  The Dragon, who appeared to be a woman, and Drenneth were exchanging sword blows, parrying and blocking one another in the center of the circle. Another Dragon in armor, this one male, was edging toward Drenneth, trying to double down on the damage, while the blood magic user, the one who hit me with maleficium, struck him from behind.

  I had to help him!

  I ran straight for the center of the circle where they were all fighting and cast pandemonium, throwing the Dragon team members to the ground. Behind me, HolloPoint sharpened his first weapons, and I could hear Drenneth’s breathing ease as the heals flowed to him.

  “The Dragon is dominating the center!” The female announcer voice called out.

  What? How could that be? I did a quick count and sure enough. Only Drenneth, HolloPoint, and I were in the center, whereas the Dragon had four team members there. The Dragon healer, dressed in an ornate black and gold bodysuit embroidered with exotic dragon-like imagery, also wore fist weapons. His arms steadily worked, sharpening his weapons, to generate the anima healing to sustain his team.

  “Thanks, Hadad!” The female Dragon tank yelled, as she scrambled to her feet and took another swing at Drenneth.

  The Illuminati sniper who had cornered me previously was now focused on HolloPoint, who dodged behind the sarsen stones of the inner heel of the henge to avoid the sniper’s shots.

  With his target no longer available, the sniper turned once again on me and opened fire. I backed away, only to realize that another Illuminati team member had cast an elemental manifestation of electricity and little bolts of lightning were sizzling up and down my body, messing with my muscle coordination. I moved out of range as quickly as I could and turned back to the center to see where I should go next.

  I was too slow, however, and I’d moved outside of HolloPoint’s healing range. Before I knew it, the sniper had a bead on me, and I once again collapsed from anima exhaustion.

  And, back to the anima well for me.

  I was hopping mad, and my body was tingling. This was frustrating! I could hardly get my bearings in the fight before I was down again. These Illuminati snipers were a problem, and I couldn’t get near enough to them with chaos magic to do any damage in return.

  With a whoosh, Sevenoir popped up next to me in the well. He dusted off his uniform and stepped out of the well, waiting at the ready for the gates to drop to let him back in.

  “I am no good at this,” I wailed at him.

  “Stop standing in the open areas, for Pete’s sake.” He growled at me, apparently annoyed by his own anima exhaustion. “Use the stones to break line-of-sight with them. If they can’t see you, they can’t hit you. The Illuminati aren’t in this to win as a team. They play a solo game trying to get a high kill count, so they sit outside of the center and take pot shots from range. You’ve got to stay moving to keep them from targeting you.”

  I looked up at the scoreboard. The Dragon had 30 points, and we had 15. The Illuminati were still at zero.

  Huh. Looked like Sevenoir was right.

  “And focus your fire on the healers. If they go down, so does everyone else on the team.”

  Punctuating Sevenoir’s comment with a whoos
h, HolloPoint appeared in the well next to us.

  “The bastards keep immobilizing me so I can’t heal,” he groused. The gates to the area opened, and we ran back in once again.

  “The Dragon is dominating the center!” The announcer repeated. Damn it! We were losing the match.

  I ran back toward the inner area of the henge, keeping my eyes peeled for healers. I spotted the Dragon healer—Hadad, they’d called him—standing between two stones for cover. Making sure I stayed moving, I glanced around for the Illuminati equivalent and realized that I didn’t see anyone on that team who appeared to be healing.

  I ran from cover to cover, toward Hadad. I didn’t have the best spells to use on a single target, but at a minimum, I could bring him down with pandemonium. I might not do much damage, but I could at least keep him busy.

  Sevenoir and Zamira were now inside the circle as well, with HolloPoint between them. Drenneth kept swinging his sword at the two Dragon tanks. I saw Zamira finish off the Dragon blood user with a pistol shot, while Sevenoir kept a close eye out for Illuminati snipers. All five of us, I realized, were in the center.

  “The Templars are dominating the center!” The announcer intoned.

  Elation rushed through my body. We were earning match points!

  I harried the Dragon healer with my chaos spells. He healed the damage I was causing easily, while also keeping his teammates in armor alive as they engaged with Drenneth.

  Hmm. This wasn’t working very well. I watched as one of the Illuminati snipers got HolloPoint in his sites, and down went our healer again.

  I spied the red cross-hairs on my own chest and sighed with irritation. I couldn’t get away fast enough once they had a bead on me. The shot exploded there in a fine, red mist, and I crumbled to the field a third time.

  Whoosh! I was back in the anima well. I looked up at the scoreboard. There were six minutes left in the match, and the Dragon had 275 points now. We were inching up on them with 255. The Illuminati apparently hadn’t yet set foot in the center as they were still at 0.