Epic (33 page)

With the sound of two enormous rocks being smashed together, B.E. had struck his first blow with Thunder. The ogre in front of him reeled back, stunned.

A streak of silver lightning from B.E.’s other hand and the ogre toppled over, a huge black scar down the front of its chest, iron armor melted all down the line of the blow.

“Aha!” shouted B.E. triumphantly, ducking an incoming club, and then swerving to the side to avoid another, which thudded into the ground beside him.

Thunder roared again and another ogre staggered; Bjorn rushed forward to finish it off with a two-handed blow from his golden ax. Lightning flashed and they had to jump aside as another ogre crashed down, this time falling forward amongst them.

To the shocking drum beats of Thunder and the dazzling sweeps of Lightning, they drove through the ranks of ogres, gray forces rushing in behind them, like water through a breach. Bjorn was assisting B.E. with the fighting. Anonemuss was calmly walking just behind the two warriors, a wicked-looking, black crossbow in his hands, saving his shots for the rare occasion when one of the ogres managed to mount some resistance to the fighters. Sigrid was monitoring the health of the team; so far she had not been required to cast any “heals.” Similarly Injeborg evidently felt no need to use up any of her spells; she and Erik shared a quick glance and a nod.

Surprisingly quickly they emerged from the ranks of the ogres to a clear part of the field; behind them the land seethed with combat, the heavy scything blows of ogre clubs smashing aside gray fighters, whose own weapons tried to chip away at the monsters, eventually, and at great cost, bringing one crashing down like a felled tree.

Ahead was the orc army, which was thinning the gray ranks facing them at an alarming rate, despite the fact that they were considerably less powerful than the ogres. The Executioner was riding with the orcs, brandishing the Bastard Sword of the Moon high above him, causing the player army to stiffen with fear and become easy kills for the monsters who rushed gloatingly upon them.

“B.E. and Bjorn, keep the orcs off me. A ‘haste’ spell, please, Injeborg. Harald?” Erik glanced around.

“Here,” said a voice from the shadows.

“Let’s try to take him.”

 

Ragnok was furious. How dare so many people show such open disobedience to Central Allocations? Well, they would regret it. He was in no mood to deal with the plaintive questions of Bekka. She had refused to join him until he answered her doubts. That was a mistake; Ragnok answered to nobody. He had no need of her.

After he had cut down her druidess, Rangok rode proudly out towards the pitiful gray army of players, knowing their eyes were turned towards him—the most striking figure on the battlefield. Behold your ruin.

The Sword of the Moon paralyzed them through its fearful emanations, and then, with growls of delight, his orcs slavered and capered as they ran among the bucket-headed, gray figures, dispatching them to a life of complete poverty. After this battle, the world would irretrievably change; never again would anyone dare challenge a decision of C.A., as the effort would be utterly futile. When they unclipped from this battle, these people would return to their lives with bitterness, perhaps partly directed at the idealistic children whose foolishness was to blame for this slaughter.

Ahead of him he spotted a patch of color against the drab grays of the player army and the black leather armor of the orcs. With a sneer, Ragnok recognized the characters. It was the Osterfjord Players themselves and he laughed when he realized that they seemed to be seeking him out.

The two warriors were casting orcs aside with their blows, opening a path towards the Executioner. Ragnok chuckled aloud; they were in for a surprise when they turned those seemingly powerful weapons against him. He urged his warhorse forward to meet Erik’s team.

Running ahead of the two warriors was the flowing and highly animated female controlled by the son of Harald Erikson and Freya. Inside his interface, Ragnok blushed and gritted his teeth.

“I hope Harald is quick to learn of your death from his exile—perhaps you will be joining him there after this battle,” the Executioner shouted out.

She was some kind of thief and seemed to react with anger to his words, leaping up towards him, a rapier in each hand. With a leisurely swing, the Executioner brought the Bastard Sword of the Moon before him, and she instantly froze with fear. He laughed.

 

“Too weak to resist!” Her friends were too far back to save her, and he rode alongside the motionless figure. She was quite pretty; it was almost a shame to detach her head, but he did so nevertheless with a skillful stroke of the Moonsword that used its heavy weight to generate the necessary power to send those shining tresses to the ground.

Except that she was not dead. At the very moment when Ragnok had anticipated a slight jarring sensation in his arm from the impact of hitting her beautifully pale slender neck, she had ducked. As his blow sliced empty air and drew him off balance, the thief twisted the Executioner’s sword arm and suddenly, stunned, he was on the ground, looking at the clouds, pin pricks of damage from nonmagical weapons into the joints of his armor beginning to lower his health.

How did they know? Ragnok was sweating, not from concern, but from shame. She had tricked him! She had not been held by the “fear.” With a roar of anger, he sprang up, leaving the Moonsword in the grass until after this encounter, and drew Acutus.

She was laughing at him, and gave him a curtsey.

Acutus cleaved the air itself, crisply parting the very molecules, tearing at the fabric of the world. But she had cartwheeled at extraordinary speed, kicked an incoming orc in the face, and from the momentum of the kick somersaulted right back over him. The Executioner spun around to face her, but his movements felt clumsy and slow in comparison to hers.

“Oh, I’ve broken a fingernail. Look!” Cindella held out a hand.

At that moment, Ragnok experienced the Executioner stagger forward and felt the tingling sensation that indicated he had been hit. The drop in his health was shocking, more than half, and worse, it was still slipping away.

The assassin character of Harald Goldenhair, having just stepped out of the shadows, had plunged two ichorous blades into his back and was watching for their impact, warily, a good distance from the reach of Acutus. Blood and vengeance! The Executioner was dying. Blinking back tears that suddenly came into his eyes, Ragnok fought back against panic. Unclip? Try a potion first. He scrambled to the horse, all the time his health slipping away remorselessly. Apparently totally unafraid of him, the thief was resuming her small but now alarming contribution to his wounds, picking out the weak points in his leg armor to stab through them with her rapiers. He waved Acutus about him to fend her off, but she easily avoided the blade. A moment or two before death, he got the stopper off the bottle and threw the blue liquid into the mouth of the Executioner. Immediately his health gave a leap up. But it was still less than half and sinking fast.

Shaking with rage and fear, Ragnok unclipped, unsure if the Executioner would be alive when he risked attempting to return to the game. In any case, unless he had a University healer right at that spot and ready to cast when he clipped up, the Executioner was going to die of the powerful poison that Harald had used. The battle was no longer in his hands.

 

“Good work!” shouted Bjorn enthusiastically over his shoulder, as his great sweeping ax blows kept the orcs at bay.

“Pure class,” agreed B.E.

“Nice.” Anonemuss picked out a charging orc chieftain and loosened his crossbow, the bolt flying into its mouth and sending it spinning backwards.

“Now what, Erik?” asked Injeborg.

“Let me see.”

All around was chaos. Very little pattern remained to the battle as the two armies had interpenetrated one another. All the way down to the sea, the sky was filled with streaks of silver and blossoming spheres of fire as sorcerers unleashed their spells. The whistles and crashes of magic missiles, fireballs, lightning bolts, and the occasional ground-shaking thud of a huge rock striking the ground drowned out the constant roars from the seething mass of monsters.

It was shocking to see how few gray figures were left.

“We’re losing,” Erik said glumly. “Badly.”

“Make for the tower then?” suggested Harald.

“Yes. Wait!” To the right, the paladins were a bright source of hope. Although mostly reduced to fighting on foot, they still appeared to be a formidable force. Around the knights, dark masses of trolls were crowded close. But all the University players seemed to be down. “Over there,” Cindella said, pointing. “Let’s try to join them.”

“Gotcha!” B.E. still sounded confident and led the way, hacking an uphill path through the orcs that came on relentlessly.

“That’s half my ‘heals’ gone,” announced Sigrid as she replenished Bjorn again.

“Erik, I’m going to do my own thing. This kind of fighting doesn’t suit me. Let me try to assassinate a beholder or two.” Harald was in a crouch, recoating his blades with thick black syrup, carefully watching for inrushing enemies.

“Good idea, Dad. Good luck.”

“You too.” The wood elf deftly stole between two large ogre bodies and was gone.

For a long time, they slogged their way onwards, barely speaking, other than to call out for heals or for a spell to aid them. The two bears were looking battered; the she bear was limping heavily.

It was clear that B.E. was still full of energy. His warrior was magnificent, barely pausing between great strokes of his powerful weapons, parrying, dodging, and then crushing the orcs, often with a single strike. In a few hours, B.E. had probably slain more monsters than any other character in the history of the game, and he was still going strong.

A storm of tiny incandescent white flares tore into Sigrid and she was dead instantly.

“Magic missiles!” cried Bjorn.

“Where?” Erik was panicked. The barrage that had just taken Sigrid from them was more violent than any he had experienced. An immensely powerful sorcerer was close and was probably preparing another spell, perhaps one that was about to wipe them all out.

“There! Rakshasha!” Injeborg pointed to the left. A humanoid with a tiger’s head and tail, dressed in eastern silks, was glaring at them as he cast, waving his claws.

An incredibly furious howling of fire burst through their group, instantly consuming the grass in a great circle around them. But they had been lucky in the sorcerer’s choice of spell, for their fire resistance potions were still in effect and the damage to the group was minimal, whereas the blast had utterly destroyed the nearby orcs, whose boots stood empty but for trails of smoke drifting up into the sky.

Without Erik having to give any instructions, they all ran for the creature, hoping to prevent it from casting further spells upon them. The rakshasha dropped to all fours and, with a growl, rushed away from them; so lithe and swift was the monster that Erik’s heart sank. Even Cindella in her magical boots would not catch it. The monster would wait its moment and come at them again, next time with ice or lightning.

But suddenly the rakshasha slowed, the bushes and grasses around the tiger reaching up, snaking around its arms and legs. Roaring angrily, it pulled hard, but could barely take a step.

“Go. Go! This won’t last long,” urged Injeborg. She had saved them with an ensnaring spell, and Erik’s heart leapt with admiration and warmth.

They fell upon the creature, and while it gave a savage slash to Bjorn with its one free claw, it stood no chance against the multiplicity of blows that they dealt.

No sooner had they dealt with the tigerish sorcerer than they had to begin cleaving their path through the orc army once more. Not far ahead was the ringing of sword on shield and the shouts of war.

“Sir Warren, Sir Warren!” Cindella shouted as loud as she could.

“Here!” A response that delighted Erik.

“To me!”

A last orc spun away, blasted by B.E.’s stroke with Thunder, and they were together. Only three paladins remained, all on foot now, and showing the marks of tooth and claw on their tarnished armor.

Sir Warren saluted Erik with his great sword.

“Your orders?”

All over the battlefield the gray player forces had been annihilated. Hundreds of thousands of players had lost their characters. The once-strong corps of centaurs lay still, a long trail of half-equine bodies marking their progress across the field. The dark forces had triumphed comfortably; hordes of goblins and row upon row of silent skeletons remained on the field. Slowly, the piles of dead trolls were stirring; given enough time, those of them who had avoided death by fire would be back on their feet.

 

“We’ve lost the battle,” Erik said with a sigh, sorry for those, including Sigrid, who had lost everything.

“But we can still make it to the tower,” urged Injeborg. “And that’s all that matters.”

“Come on then!” B.E. led the way. “Let’s make sure my sister hasn’t died for nothing.”

“To the stones it is!” Sir Warren took up a stance to B.E.’s right, Bjorn on his left. The two surviving female paladins guarded the back of the group against the attacks of the remaining orcs.

There were still some two hundred yards between the players and the stones, and now it was swift-moving skeletons that jabbed and struck all about the group. Their blows were not lethal, but these undead soldiers were skillful enough to strike home more often than did the orcs. All of the remaining characters began to suffer a slow erosion of their health.

“I need a ‘heal.’ ” Harald materialized among them.

“Dad! How did it go?”

“Got them all.” The assassin was staggering, marked with cuts. “Sigrid dead?” he asked, guessing the answer.