by L. E. Price
“Not an earthquake,” Prentise said. Her voice was soft, tight, with an edge of finality.
The road began to boil.
The stone melted, roiling, and air-bubbles rose up to the surface of the mud. They popped with wet squelches and flooded Jake’s nose with the stench of raw sewage. He fell back at Prentise’s side, throwing an arm across his face, as more rocks bounded down the trembling mountain. One of the dusk elves pointed and cried out, “Abomination!”
When the creature blasted free of the earth a moment later, letting out a roar to shake the heavens from its three trumpet mouths, Jake knew that was the only word for it.
24.
The abomination exploded from the road in a hurricane of boiling mud. It was the size of twin elephants, elephants whose mottled gray flesh and thick bones had been broken, melted together and fused in unholy asymmetry. It was a creature that couldn’t exist in nature; nothing about it was reasonable, or logical. Nothing about it was sane.
A tentacle lashed through the air like a whip made of living flesh, tipped with a spike of bone. It punched through a dusk elf’s chest and hoisted him into the air. Then it shook him like a dog with a chew toy before throwing him loose, slamming his ragged corpse to the ground. Fresh mouths sprouted in the shapeless beast’s back, braying to the heavens.
Prentise was running sidelong, strafing, peppering the abomination with barbed arrows as Brandy circled overhead. Woody ran in close, winding up his hammer for a brutal swing. A fresh tentacle erupted from the creature’s bulk and whipped across his stomach, sending him flying backward and tumbling across the rocky soil.
Eyes sprouted all over the creature’s body. Some human, some the size of bulging baseballs, all different colors and all lidless, mad, seeing in every direction. One of Merisaude’s men thought he could slip around behind it, twin daggers at the ready. A fresh blister of eyes caught him. A tentacle snapped around his ankle, hauled him off his feet and dragged him close.
The abomination raised one titanic hoof and brought it crashing down. The elf’s head exploded like a ripe tomato.
Razor-sharp blasts of lightning crackled from Merisaude’s staff. She shouted to the others as she dove under a flailing tentacle. “Go for the eyes! The eyes are its weak spot!”
Jake watched the battlefield churn around him. He felt helpless, useless in the face of this monstrosity. He watched one of the dusk elves drive the tip of a rapier straight into one of its eyes, bursting it in a shower of egg-yolk ichor. It roared, outraged, and for a moment he had its undivided attention.
Twin tentacles grabbed hold of him, lashing around the man’s neck and ankles, and lifted him up in the air. Then they twisted in opposite directions. With a sickening crack and a shower of scarlet rain, the elf’s body ripped in half.
There had to be something Jake could do. Given how it was tearing through people thirty, maybe forty levels higher than him, the numbers weren’t on his side. He could bang on the abomination all afternoon without making a dent, and he wouldn’t survive a single hit. The mathematics of the battle were an unclimbable wall.
But he didn’t have to climb it.
Insight blazing, he unsheathed his tonfas and charged into the fight. Prentise yelled a warning as a barbed arrow whistled over his shoulder, telling him to stay back. Instead he ran in close, right up to the stomping beast, and slammed a baton into one bloodshot, scarlet eye.
It noticed him.
The abomination bellowed and stomped. Jake flung himself backward, landing on the dirt and rolling as a tentacle slashed at the earth.
“Don’t attack the eyes,” he shouted, darting in again. “Hit it in the blubber!”
He whacked at another baleful eye with his left hand. A tentacle came screaming down and he braced his right tonfa against his forearm, fending it off as it battered him to his knees. Merisaude circled around, lightning rippling in a nimbus around her staff.
“What is he doing?” she demanded.
Prentise knew. Her sudden laughter rang out above the creature’s mad bellowing. She nocked an arrow and changed her tactics. The next shaft punched into the abomination’s fleshy hide. Then another, and another, as trickles of black blood drizzled onto the sodden earth.
“He’s doing the Brandy Maneuver,” she said.
Woody followed her lead, coming at it from the other direction. His iron-headed hammer swung again and again, pounding its leathery hide like a chef tenderizing a tough steak. Meanwhile Jake was rolling, scrambling, staying just ahead of a mad fusillade of tentacle whips and taking the occasional slap at an eye when he could steal a second to breathe. He couldn’t kill the beast, could barely hurt it, but it was designed to go after anyone who hit its weak points. It was confused, angry, more concerned with smashing the annoying gnat than dealing with the hornets stinging it from every side.
Woody swung his hammer back and squared his footing. Then he charged. He wound up as he ran, shoulders twisting, momentum turning him into a living weapon forged from cold iron. He spun on his heel, the hammer-head spinning him like a top, and crashed into the abomination with everything he had.
Its hide buckled and split, gnarled ribs caving in, showering the dwarf in a torrent of black blood. Trumpet-mouths screamed at the overcast sky. Then the abomination let out its last wheezing breath, thudded onto its belly, and died.
The mountain gave one final tremble, pebbles rolling down the gray-wool slope. The dust slowly settled. A spray of blue neon washed over Jake’s vision.
Defeated level thirty-eight abomination.
0 General XP gained (assist from multiple high-level players, no challenge).
0 Skill XP gained (assist from multiple high-level players, no challenge).
Codex entry: Abomination unlocked (5% completion).
“No challenge, my ass,” he panted, sitting breathless on the stony ground. His shaky hands pressed the tonfas back into their belt-loops.
The abomination’s corpse boiled and broke, melting into oil-paint slurry and vanishing into the soil. Woody offered Jake a beefy hand and pulled him up to his feet. Prentise’s fingertips rested gently on his shoulder.
“Nice,” she said.
Merisaude leaned on her staff, exhausted. The bodies of her men lay scattered and broken all around her. Their fallen packs, and the sack bulging with faintly glowing treasure, stayed behind, bound to the life of the party’s leader. She’d survived the battle, and her loot had survived it with her.
“You’re welcome,” Jake told her.
For a second, she looked like she was going to insult him. Maybe claim she would have gotten through the fight on her own. Even she wasn’t that cocky. There was a tiny crack in Merisaude’s mask of arrogance as she locked eyes with Jake.
“Thank you,” she said.
“I think you owe us.”
She nodded at the packs. “I don’t suppose you want a share of the treasure?”
“Information’s worth more than gold,” Jake said.
She thought about that. Jake could see the struggle in her eyes, some weight she was wrestling with. She was deciding which cards she could show and which ones she needed to keep. In the end, she gestured with her staff, pointing to the packs in the road. One was smeared with its former owner’s blood, black flies starting to gather.
“Help me carry these into town,” Merisaude said, “and you’ve got a deal.”
* * * *
Jake played Santa Claus. He shouldered the mammoth burlap sack and lugged it behind him, back aching with every step, along the gray and dusty road back to town. Prentise hoisted one of the fallen traveling packs. Woody took the other; his short dwarven legs weren’t up to the challenge, and the bottom of the long, bulky pack dragged behind him in the dirt.
Merisaude walked ten feet ahead, blissfully unburdened and her chin high, content to let them do all the work. The tip of her ram-headed staff thumped against the desolate soil.
“So, out of curiosity,” Jake said, “exactly what th
e hell jumped us back there? One of the necromancer’s creations, like the scarecrows?”
Prentise bent under the weight of her pack. A thin sheen of perspiration glistened on her dirt-smudged brow.
“Abomination,” she said. “Spawn of the Winter Void. The Void is…raw, cold chaos. Equal parts frostbite and hate. It’s an eternal storm at the edge of the world, held back by the power of the gods. Which is one reason why the gods are at war; only the strongest deities can hold the Winter Void back and keep creation intact, so they constantly test and temper one another. Those who fall are replaced by stronger ones, all the better to push back the Void.”
“Divine Darwinism,” Jake said.
At his other side, Woody chimed in, keeping his voice low and aiming a pointed look at Merisaude’s back.
“And in mechanics terms, the devs are getting creative. Abominations started showing up with the last big content patch. They’re randomly generated. Their shape, their powers, their resistances, each one is unique; they scale to the area they spawn in, but they’re tough as nails.”
“They can appear anywhere, at any time,” Prentise added. “Bad news all around. Thankfully, they’re rare. That’s the first one I’ve seen in a month.”
Good news, as far as Jake was concerned; taking the monster on had given him the leverage he needed, right when he needed it. But only if Merisaude held up her end of the bargain once they got back to Hurst.
The weight on his shoulder made the road twice as long. Eventually, though, the rotten shingled rooftops and worm-eaten wood of the town loomed up on the horizon. In a cramped village chapel where the scent of frankincense clung to the stagnant air, they dumped the loot with a clatter at the foot of an altar draped in moldering purple velvet.
The town priest had a nervous disposition. He moved like a stick figure under his moth-eaten vestments, and his long, bony fingers twitched as he plucked item after item from the packs. Tablets of silver, tablets of iron, all etched with occult sigils and spidery runes.
“A fine discovery,” he said over one, fingertips tracing the engraving. “I could offer you…twenty-five gold for it.”
“Sold,” Merisaude said, leaning on her staff with both hands.
“A rich discovery,” he said over another in an identical cadence. “I could offer you…forty-five gold for it.”
“Sold.”
His hand hovered over an elaborate necklace of thin silver wire, set with moonstones. The necklace took on a black-light glow, a faint shimmer of malevolence.
“A necklace of greater agility,” the priest mused. “Potent but profaned by the necromancer’s curse. I could purify it, but I would have to charge you seventy gold for the blessed oils. Or I could simply sell it—”
Merisaude started to open her mouth. Prentise cut her off. “I could use that.”
The dusk elf gave Prentise a discerning look.
“Five platinum,” she said.
Prentise looked from her, to the priest, and back again.
“He’s literally charging you seventy gold to purify it. I’m standing right here. That’s an insane price markup and you know it.”
“And I’m the one who decides if it becomes a usable item or vendor trash,” Merisaude said. “I shouldn’t have to teach the so-called ‘merchant queen’ about negotiating from a place of weakness. Five platinum, or I trash it. Going, going…”
Prentise grumbled and dug into her coin-purse.
Another jumble of tablets and loose gemstones later, and the priest produced something new from the second pack. It was a tonfa like Jake’s, sturdy and hard and kissed with a faint shimmering veil of misty light. The wood was near jet-black with a burgundy tinge, like rich heart-blood, and glyphs had been painstakingly engraved along the length of the baton.
Merisaude was about to sell it, paused, then changed her mind.
“Purify it,” she commanded the priest. She turned to Jake. “A gift. Never let it be said that Mistress Merisaude is not generous to her servants.”
“Not your servant,” he said. He still picked up the tonfa. It dangled heavy in his grip, and luminous words scrolled in the upper corner of his vision.
Weapon: Tonfa of the Priest-King (Unique, Rare)
Attack power: 1050 / Damage type: blunt, bonus vs. undead
Level required: 20 / Relevant skills: blunt weapons, dual wield
Material: Iron-Cored Blightwood (durability 100%)
Merchant price: 2pp, 20gp
“You won’t be able to use it for a while,” Merisaude said, “not until you have a few more seasons of experience under your belt, but I doubt you’ll find anything better before you reach that point. It’ll be a fine upgrade for you.”
Jake shot a glance at Prentise. “So how come I get a freebie, and she has to pay?”
“Maybe I like you,” Merisaude said.
“I doubt that.”
“Maybe I just hate her.”
“Sounds more reasonable,” Jake said.
The dusk elf sauntered toward him. The tip of her staff dragged along the flagstone floor, the wood whispering in the stillness.
“I see you haven’t committed to following a deity yet. Have you contemplated the glories of my lord Tyrmok? Even the lesser races are able to partake in his banquet of dark blessings.” She nodded to the enchanted tonfa. “That is a mere token of the bounty you could reap. I can induct you right here and now. Only say the word, and your soul shall be healed.”
Jake remembered Woody’s warning on the afternoon of his arrival. Paradise Clash treated religion like a pyramid scheme; the more recruits you brought in, the more blessings you reaped, with the wealth cascading down from the top. Given the way the other dusk elves followed Merisaude around like ducklings, he had to guess she was standing right next to Tyrmok’s divine throne.
“Maybe I just like being a free agent,” Jake told her.
“The clash of gods is no place for bystanders,” she said. “You know what happens to people who stand in the middle of the road? They get run over.”
“Thanks for the weapon,” Jake said. “But it doesn’t pay what you owe us. You know what we want. Tell us about the realm keys.”
The dusk elf turned on her heel, her scanty silks ruffling as she showed him her back.
“I’m not endangering myself,” she said.
Prentise glowered as she circled around, cutting off the aisle and the only door out. “We had a deal, Merisaude—”
She held up one slender hand, calling for silence.
“I will not endanger myself,” Merisaude repeated, “but I will fulfill my end of the bargain. If you happen to find yourself at Starcrest Farm around midnight tonight, and if you conceal yourselves well, you might witness something interesting.”
“’Interesting,’” Jake echoed.
“Indeed.” She glanced back at him, over the curve of her bare shoulder. “And if you get caught, I never met you, I have no idea who you are, and we certainly never had this conversation.”
It didn’t matter if he was grilling a suspect on Earth or on Gaia Prime; Jake’s instincts held true, and he knew this was the best offer they were going to get.
“Deal,” he said.
25.
Merisaude took her earnings and half a pack’s worth of assorted magical trinkets, gifts to dole out to the faithful. Jake, Prentise and Woody headed back to the relative privacy of Hurst’s cavernous and dusty town hall.
“Little problem,” Woody said, his voice echoing off the high rafters. “I can’t back you up tonight. The next round of the Golden Temple semifinals starts in an hour, and I’ve got to cover it for my feed.”
“You can’t skip it, just once?” Jake asked.
Woody gave him a chuckle, like he was about to explain something complicated to a precocious child.
“I’m a professional streamer, man. There are a hundred new streamers every single day, and a hundred behind them, all of them trying to crack into the big time. You know what happens if
I don’t give my audience a show? They go elsewhere. And they don’t come back. Every hour I’m not live is an hour I’m losing subscribers. SDS isn’t paying me enough to make up for that.”
“No worries,” Prentise said. “We’ve got this.”
Starcrest Farm was a quarter-mile past the far side of town, opposite the blighted fields. These lands were still clinging to life by the fingernails of the farming-folk, with withered stalks of wheat struggling to survive. Sackcloth scarecrows with crudely painted faces dangled from fence posts, but they remained limp as Jake and Prentise passed nearby. Brandy perched on Prentise’s gauntlet, the falcon’s eyes sharp, head swiveling to watch for threats.
The sky went funeral gray, then black. The last rays of sunlight slipped behind the mountains. Up ahead, shifting lantern-light gleamed behind the curtains of a broken-down farmhouse. Beside it, the mouth of a slouching barn yawned open and empty.
“Here’s good,” Prentise whispered. They found a spot to kneel down at the edge of the field, in a patch that was more crabgrass than wheat. Just enough foliage to keep them shrouded from sight. Jake’s eyes took on a hard squint as he scanned the horizon, not sure what he was supposed to be seeing.
Ten minutes to midnight.
“So,” Prentise whispered, hunkering down beside him, “where’d you learn to fight?”
“Your bird taught me,” he said.
Her elbow nudged his arm. “Seriously. You didn’t learn moves like those playing Paradise Clash.”
“Here and there. I’ve been around.”
“Most people,” she said, “they see a man die right in front of them, they don’t bounce back this fast. Mr. Rickey wasn’t your first murder victim.”
“We’re agreed it wasn’t a bot malfunction, then.”
Prentise’s eyes mirrored her falcon’s, in the dark. They glittered, hard and hungry.
