by Demi Harper
She was already beyond reach, though, and he dodged past her and the new kobolds and resumed his retreat, taking advantage of Ris’kin’s distraction to put some more distance between them.
I glared at my mana globes, then realized I now had almost three – not enough to summon anything particularly strong, but enough for a basic creature. I pulled up the forrel blueprint and threw the new god-born creature into the fight.
It took Ris’kin and the new forrel only a minute or so to take care of the three spear-throwing kobolds, but by the time my avatar returned her attention to Barka he’d already disappeared around the next bend in the tunnel. The bastard could move quickly, despite the damage to his leg.
My avatar gave chase, as did her new forrel ally.
It had been a long, hard fight, but Barka was now the only enemy remaining in my Sphere of Influence. I’d be damned if I was going to let him escape, not after all the damage he’d caused. Besides, I needed to send his master a message.
The forrel overtook Ris’kin in their race down the passage; my avatar was slowed by the spear impaling her shoulder, and while she still appeared more than up for this final fight with Barka, it seemed running was too painful for her right now. She barked encouragement at her pursuing kin, who was gaining on the fleeing kobold commander with every step.
The forrel was just a few feet away from Barka now, and I urged her onward. She bunched her leg muscles and leapt—
—and smashed against an invisible wall.
The forrel slid to the ground. Just a few feet away, Barka stopped his hobbling run and turned to leer at the dazed creature. The forrel wobbled to her feet and tried to attack him, pushing in vain against the invisible wall that marked the edge of my Sphere of Influence. She could go no further.
But Ris’kin could.
My avatar reached the boundary and pushed on past the forrel, her injured arm dangling uselessly, but the fingers of her other hand were clenched around a spear she’d pilfered from the last batch of kobolds.
She didn’t waste the weapon on a throw this time; she held it firmly, approaching Barka, her steady pace showing that she was cautious but determined. He would not get away this time.
Barka glanced over his shoulder and then bared his teeth at Ris’kin, waiting.
My avatar halted, suddenly suspicious.
With good reason.
Ris’kin saw it before I did. First her ears flicked, then her fur bristled, hackles rising. She raised her head to look over Barka’s shoulder at the bend in the tunnel behind him.
Out from the shadows stepped a creature straight out of nightmare.
Its hairless flesh was pasty and white, and its eyes were clearly sightless, like a fish from the deeps. Its fanged mouth was surrounded by tentacles that writhed and wriggled like drowning worms.
The creature was taller even than Ris’kin, but it did not walk on two legs; no, its lower body ended in a slimy, tentacled mass, and it slithered along the floor like a cross between an octopus and a slug. Where Ris’kin’s form was sleek and furred, this creature’s was scaled, with a mucous-like sheen coating its skin, and instead of arms, four long tentacles emerged from its shoulders – a bit like those of my whipfish.
All in all, it was the ugliest thing I’d ever seen.
‘Corey,’ Ket whispered, as though afraid the creature would hear her. ‘I know this monster. It’s Snagga. Grimrock’s old avatar – resurrected.’
For some reason, I was surprised to learn that Grimrock had an avatar of his own, just like me. Internally, I recoiled at this reminder of our similarities.
He’s a Core – just like me; of course he has an avatar.
Still, when I looked at the two avatars – brave, fox-like Ris’kin and the slimy, chthonic Snagga – facing off, it was hard to imagine any two creatures more different.
Barka took another step back, away from Ris’kin and toward this new… creature. Snagga.
‘What’s so bad about this Snagga?’ I asked Ket in a tone of false bravado, as though the creature’s appearance wasn’t enough evidence that it was ill news.
‘Snagga is… bad, Corey. You know how Ris’kin has developed human traits? Compassion? Personality?’ She didn’t wait for me to reply. ‘Snagga is the opposite. It’s picked up traits of evil from Grimrock. Something less than human, but more than beast – too dumb to feel pain, but smart enough to know how best to inflict it on others. Corey… Snagga has always taken particular pleasure in eating its victims… alive.’
Well, this new development was less than ideal. It was clear now that my avatar couldn’t take on both of her opponents, especially not Grimrock’s latest monstrous arrival – and if what Ket said was true (and it usually was), nor would I want her to risk trying.
However, if Ris’kin could lure Snagga back within my Sphere, she and the forrel might stand a chance of defeating it together.
‘Come back,’ I commanded Ris’kin. ‘Now!’
To my utter amazement, she hesitated.
Ris’kin glanced at the approaching enemy avatar, then back at my Sphere, and for an instant I thought she was finally going to heed my call to return. Then her head turned again, and I saw her gaze alight on Barka, who had turned his back on her to regard his new disturbing ally.
Before I could shout her down, Ris’kin flashed across the space between her and the enemy, dashing toward the approaching creature and lifting her stolen spear. In a movement almost too fast to catch, she brought the weapon down and across to crunch through the side of Barka’s skull. The kobold commander dropped to the ground, instantly dead.
Her deed done, Ris’kin spun on the spot and finally made to follow my command. But she’d taken but a single step when one of Snagga’s long shoulder tentacles lashed out to strike her flank. An instant later, my avatar froze in place.
‘What’s happening?’ I shrieked at Ket.
‘Venom,’ she explained mournfully. Why did she sound so tragic? So resigned? ‘Snagga freezes its prey in place, then…’
Oh. The eating.
The creature oozed closer to Ris’kin, and I saw her twitch the closer it came. But the venom held her paralyzed.
Ket was right; this was bad. In this situation – if this creature began eating Ris’kin alive – her ability to regenerate would only prolong her torment.
Snagga circled Ris’kin slowly. My avatar’s eyes were wide and shining fearfully, straining to follow the predator even as it stepped behind her from sight. Then, suddenly and without warning, the enemy avatar lashed out with a shoulder tendril, wrapping it around Ris’kin’s leg and then yanking hard at a cruelly calculated angle.
A snap echoed down the passage. When Snagga moved away, I saw bone protruding through the skin of my avatar’s lower leg.
‘No!’ Ket and I both cried together. I banged uselessly against the invisible barrier that marked the boundary of my Sphere of Influence. Unlike the first time I’d found myself in this situation, I somehow knew that this time there would be no happy ending.
Damn it! Damn it all!
Ris’kin squealed, and her eyes were wide with agony and a desperate, animal need to escape the pain. But Snagga’s immobilizing venom was still holding her firmly in place.
A small, distant part of me – the part not consumed with anguish at being forced to watch my first and most loyal creation suffer – was morbidly curious to know whether Grimrock had used the whip spider to form that particular aspect of the creature’s blueprint.
Thinking of blueprints gave me another idea, and I tried to use Evolution to help my avatar break the enemy’s grip – just like I had with the boulderskin and Barka’s whip – but nothing happened.
‘She’s outside your Sphere of Influence, Corey,’ said Ket, and I could hear the pain in her voice. ‘There’s nothing you can do.’
‘Damn it!’ I screamed.
Ris’kin whimpered, and rage and sorrow filled me as I gazed out helplessly from the boundary of my Sphere. Below me, the lo
ne forrel paced restlessly, also painfully desperate to help its sister.
The bone protruding from Ris’kin’s leg was jagged and stained with blood. Snagga circled Ris’kin, its mouth tentacles waving, then reached a tentacle out toward her other leg. Again, bone snapped, and this time my avatar crumpled to the ground.
The immobilizing poison was wearing off!
‘Come back,’ I pleaded with her yet again.
But her legs were too damaged to bear her weight. And though I directed every ounce of mental energy at her in a desperate attempt to help her rise, it was futile. She was beyond my reach.
The monster circled her once again, then reached down to clamp a slimy tendril around my avatar’s red-furred throat. I sensed Ket turn away, and almost couldn’t bear to watch myself as Snagga lifted Ris’kin to its eye level, then stepped closer, leaning in toward her neck, its blue-black mandibles bared and dripping.
Then Snagga’s head jerked back. It looked over its shoulder, then struggled to turn its ugly face back toward Ris’kin, as though it was straining against an invisible leash.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked Ket anxiously. ‘Ket?’
‘I can’t look, Corey. Don’t make me look, please don’t—’
‘Ket!’ I hissed. ‘Look!’
We both watched as Snagga stood there for a few moments longer, its muscles quivering wetly, as though it was fighting some mental compulsion just like the physical one it had inflicted upon my avatar.
After a moment, Snagga grunted, then yanked hard on the tendril that was around Ris’kin’s neck.
There was a sick snapping sound. My avatar collapsed to the ground once again, this time completely still.
My mind refused to register what had just happened. I simply stared at Snagga as it stood over Ris’kin, who was crumpled on the ground. Dead. Then the vile creature’s gaze crawled up, toward where I watched the scene from my position near the ceiling. It wiggled its tentacles at me, somehow conveying both threat and derision. Then it turned around and disappeared into the darkness.
Thirty-Eight
Skin, Fur and Bones
I stared down at my dead avatar. Brave, loyal Ris’kin lay on the ground, broken. Her body – skin, fur and bones made from my very own mana just days ago – sank into the ground even as I watched. She was absorbed by the stone outside my Sphere, to be spread amongst any nearby life as a million formless mana particles.
Barka’s body sprawled nearby: a mundane flesh-and-blood remnant, one of Grimrock’s mindless denizens. Ris’kin had sacrificed her own life in exchange for taking his. To protect the gnomes. As I stared down at Barka, his red-scaled kobold face snarling even in death, it was hard to feel anything but anger toward the one responsible. For all of it.
That anger turned to rage when the return trip to the Grotto brought me back through the Heart.
Septimus lay at the bottom of his pit, among the corpses of the many kobolds he and Ris’kin had slain during the battle. The dying cave spider’s limbs – those few that remained attached – were curled and twitching, and blue fluid oozed from the crack in his carapace. Before I could even reach out to him, his body stilled. He sank into the stone and was gone.
‘Septimus,’ I whispered. I recalled with sadness his enormous arachnid majesty, the many kobolds he’d slain in defence of the Grotto, and even the playful way he’d eaten the human Cassandria. I missed him already.
My first boulderskin had been devoured by a nameless horror. The second had been blown into a thousand pieces by a shaman’s fire grenade. Ris’kin had been felled by Grimrock’s eldritch avatar, and now Septimus was gone too. Not to mention the countless forrels and whipfish that had fallen during the assault. My creations were no more.
The knowledge overwhelmed me, and I found myself wondering: why did I suddenly care? When had I started caring about these creatures?
I found myself shocked at my own thought. Why wouldn’t I care? I’d created them, after all. Besides, they were living, breathing beings, just like I had once been – and would be again, if I somehow managed to survive the coming days.
Ket’s voice buzzed through the haze of my shock and grief, urging me to remain positive.
‘They died to defend you and your denizens, Corey. It’s what they were created to do. It’s harsh, but that’s life. Better to have lived and died than to never have lived at all.’
‘But they died because of me.’
‘No. You gave them life, but Grimrock took it away. Look to him for blame. And take comfort in the knowledge that your creatures didn’t die in vain. Look at all the enemy fallen, Corey. Look what your god-born creations accomplished!’
But the sight of the legions of dead kobolds scattered throughout my Sphere of Influence did not make me feel better. If anything, I felt worse. ‘But the kobolds were just denizens, like my gnomes,’ I said to Ket. ‘They were extensions of their Core’s will; if they were doing wicked deeds, it was because Grimrock was making them do them. Right?’
‘Actually, it’s a two-way thing,’ Ket replied. ‘A Core may influence its denizens in certain ways, yes – like how you might choose to use the Raid ability to command your followers to attack a rival faction – but generally it’s the nature of the denizens that have a bigger impact on the Core.’
‘You’re saying… what, that denizens can influence their Core’s personality?’
She glowed slightly in the affirmative. ‘That’s how religion works, after all – the worshipers shape the deity, at least at the beginning. Gods might be powerful, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re created by those who need them. Consciously or not, the gnomes summoned you and are molding you to be what they need you to be in order for them to survive.’
That sounded less than amazing. ‘Does this mean I’m not the same person now as I was in my previous life?’ Was that the reason I barely remembered anything from before?
She gave a tinkling laugh. ‘Not unless you were evil.’ She laughed again. I did not.
Had I been evil? I thought back to the vague memories I’d experienced since my awakening, few and far between though they were. Images of an underground city; a knife in the dark; a pile of bodies at the bottom of a pit.
And now, as though summoned by my concerns, a new image: robed, hooded figures surrounding me, heads bowed. They towered over me, and I realized I was lying down. The bottom half of their shadowed faces were lit by a glowing purple gem that rested on my chest. The image was at once strange and horrifyingly familiar.
I came back to myself with a jolt. Though I was still unsure as to what exactly had been occurring in the memory, I knew it couldn’t be good. The robed figures didn’t exactly look like they’d been about to throw me a birthday party.
I glanced at Ket as I tried to stifle my fears. To my relief, she was still glowing with amusement at the very idea of my being formerly evil. I struggled to collect my thoughts and steer the conversation back to safer topics.
‘But surely not all kobolds are evil,’ I said.
‘Of course not,’ said Ket. ‘The very notion of evil – and, by extension, good – is highly debatable, but let’s not get into that right now. Suffice to say that if enough denizens behave in a particular way, that will be enough to shape their Core’s personality and influence its strategy for survival. In the case of the kobolds, they lack intelligence, and so their species has learned to flourish through viciousness and strength.’
‘Survival of the fittest,’ I murmured.
‘Exactly.’
‘And the gnomes…’
‘Are naturally benevolent,’ finished Ket. ‘They thrive on their cleverness, their inventiveness, and on their innate capacity to band together in peaceful communities.’
We passed the charred remains of the fallen kobolds in the Passage. ‘And now I’m having them build a barracks. I’m about to drag them into a war.’
‘You’re not dragging them into anything, Corey,’ said Ket. ‘They’re building t
he barracks willingly, and they will fight willingly as well. I said that gnomes are peaceful; I did not say they lack the will to defend themselves. What these gnomes lacked was the capacity to defend themselves. You are providing them with that.’
She paused to let that sink in, then added cheerfully, ‘Or at least, you will have once the barracks are finished. Let’s go and see how they’re getting on, shall we?’
I commanded the last remaining forrel to remain in the Passage, beyond the pile of rubble that was half-blocking the tunnel – yet another reminder that the enemy had almost ended us. The shamans’ explosive magic in particular had come very close to tipping the scales in Grimrock’s favor.
Still, there was no disputing the fact that he had lost this round, no matter how narrowly – and at what cost – our victory had come. Maybe now he’d think twice about attempting it again – if his own denizens could even recover from such devastating losses.
‘He’ll have kept some forces back to protect his gem, no doubt,’ Ket was saying with angry-sounding certainty. ‘But this will damage him immeasurably. It will take him weeks to replenish his forces – a month, at least, given how many he lost during that last attack – and he’ll certainly be back, but you’ve bought us time.’
The thought of Grimrock’s forces returning for yet another raid was dispiriting to say the least, but the sight of the Grotto eased my worries somewhat, at least for the time being.
Ket had been right about my god-born creatures proving their worth before they died. Despite the scale of the attack, not a single gnomish head had been hurt. In fact, those who’d been gathered around the tunnel entrance – and therefore almost blown up when the lone kobold shaman had broken through – had already gone back to work.
Jack, Elwood and the other two lumberjacks were swinging their axes enthusiastically at my mana-grown shroomtrees; Twain and his fellow sawyers were hard at work in the lumberyard, cutting the fallen wood into precisely-shaped boards ready for building; and the six brickmakers were methodically filling their metal molds with clay, scraping the excess off the top, then tipping out the wet bricks onto the drying stacks.
