The Duty (Play to Live: Book # 3) Read online

  "Actually what?" I encouraged him.

  The dwarf looked rather embarrassed, scratching the end of his nose as if hinting at some sensitive financial matter. "We don't lay claim to any loot. That's what the rules say. Our job is just in and out, load and unload-"

  "And? Just spit it out!"

  "All I want to say, Sir, is that if these three eggs are all you need..."

  Aha. The dwarves must have stumbled across another hatch. They would never dare to just pocket it—that would mean a total loss of reputation for hundreds of years. But parting with it was too much for them.

  "How much do you want?"

  "A ten grand bonus."

  I winced. On one hand, I was supposed to be the loot's sole owner. On the other, if I didn't motivate the dwarves properly, the bulk of the eggs would remain buried in the sand. "Deal."

  He offered me the scoop he called a hand. Gingerly I laid my fingers in it, and Burly clenched them, trapping me hard. "Each!"

  I knew it! I looked him over, taking in this caricature of a rugby player. I made a show of lip-smacking and smiled. "Deal."

  The dwarf grinned. "You won't regret it, Sir. We'll go through every dune with a toothbrush. Paleontologists will weep in envy!"

  Three hours later the mercs, hoarse from bargaining, were already fast asleep by the campfires. Widowmaker was checking the sentry posts, lovingly stroking an artifact sword he'd won in a heated discussion. I was catching a few Zs inside the behemoth skeleton when a tired Burly came looking for me.

  "Whew! We've sieved every grain of sand through a tea strainer. No more nests within fifteen hundred feet, that I can guarantee."

  I yawned, stretched, then covered an enormous boulder half-buried in the sand with my cloak and sat on it. "What's the outcome?"

  "Seven eggs of an Ancient Basilisk and two of the Wild one. No idea what those are but they are half as big again. That merits a pay hike."

  "Tell that to the judge. A certificate of merit is all it merits."

  I nearly wept parting with seventy grand, even though the loot was well worth it. I fully intended to do a bit of haggling over the amount of their reward when the dwarf's face froze, his eyes wide open, glinting with greed. "You can keep it. I have something totally off the scale to offer."

  "Come on, then, spill it!"

  He grinned victoriously in anticipation of delivering this incredible news. "The Egg of the Basilisk King! The size of, er," he tilted his head sideways, squinting, "about ten feet in diameter. Must weigh in at about two tons. Are you interested?"

  My jaw dropped in amazement. Basilisk means king in Greek. That was the pun to end all puns! So the dwarves had unearthed the King of Kings. Ten feet in diameter! What the hell was gonna hatch from it? "How much?" my voice broke.

  In his face I could see the parable of conscience battling with greed.

  "We're not in a Turkish brothel to go haggling," I reminded him just in case. "It's a bonus we're talking here, not a sale."

  He cringed but nodded. "A hundred."

  "You don't want much, do you? Twenty."

  The head of the mules stood up, resentful. "Ninety!"

  "That's over 200 pounds of gold, are you nuts? Thirty."

  With an indignant wave of his hand, the dwarf swung round and headed for the exit. Not hearing me try to stop him, he stopped himself. "Fifty!"

  In the end, we shook on forty grand. I rubbed my hands in anticipation. "So where is it, show me!"

  I noticed a spiteful albeit slightly guilty glint in his eyes. He pointed his finger between my legs. "There!"

  And, taking in my grave stare, hurried to add, "I mean it! You're sitting on it!"

  I sprung to my feet and swung round, pointing the cursor at the boulder.

  The Basilisk's Royal Clutch.

  The number of eggs may not exceed 1

  Special condition: there can only be one King in the World.

  My inner greedy pig turned green, rapidly mutating into a toad. I gulped. This was Kuzka's mother[iii] incarnate, as large as life and twice as ugly. "Will it fit into your inventory?"

  "With a bit of a push and a shove, why not," Burly nodded. "I'll empty my bag now, grab a couple of strength buffs and polish it off with some elixirs from our emergency supply. They're on you, Sir, no offence. And don't forget to transfer us the hundred and thirty grand bonus: my boys are getting a bit impatient. They want to be sure it wasn't for nothing they'd slogged through every dune in the area with a fine-toothed comb."

  I nodded absent-mindedly, still dumbfounded by the immensity of our discovery. How was I supposed to estimate the size of this future monster?

  Should I go by its dimensions? In which case, the Royal egg was three times the size of the Ancient one. Or should I judge it by its weight? It would make it ten times bigger! Or should I measure its volume? Here I faltered: instead of looking for a suitable formula, my mind was playing with all the possible uses of this mega weapon. Could the King of Kings destroy an entire city? What if I let him loose in the middle of the City of Light?

  These days NPC guards' levels were already lagging behind those of the top players. The Admins kept coming up with lame excuses, apparently not in a hurry to install the eagerly-awaited new patch that was supposed to address the problem by increasing the guards' muscle. If it continued like this, the biggest of the more militant clans might soon start taking over entire cities whose dwellers would be forced to stand guard on their own city walls. We seemed to be re-entering the Middle Ages...

  The following night was rather restless. All real-life players had gone offline, back to their warm softly-lit kitchens while permas stood guard, protecting both themselves and the real-life players' login point.

  On one hand, nothing prevented us from setting up another portal and spending the night behind the thick walls of the Guild Hall. But admittedly it would look weird. Imagine a group of prospectors on a hike across the Ural Mountains who take a chopper every evening back to their comfortable hotel beds, then fly back to the field in the morning. The costs and the sheer "logic" of it are on a par with our situation.

  I did suggest it to Widowmaker, though. He shook his head. "All it'll do it'll derail the entire raid. The players will wander off in every which way and it'll be our job to drag them out of taverns and cathouses in the early hours. To say nothing of the complete confidentiality breach. You don't need to cater to their every whim. Their discipline is questionable at the best of times. Most of them are long-term permas who insist on playing the tough forgetting they left the comfort of their FIVR capsules quite a while ago."

  Surprisingly, the night didn't offer any surprises. Okay, so Shui Fong could have had enough on their plate to keep them at home licking their wounds, and as for the Maoists, they were probably too busy celebrating their good fortune, trying hard to behave all cute and cuddly. But what about the remaining ten million Chinese players? Granted, most of them couldn't give a damn about us and still we'd stepped on quite a few toes in this crowded Asian shop, potentially affecting the interests of dozens of unknown parties so even the Fallen One wouldn't be able to tell where and when it might all backfire.

  Predictably, breaking up camp took us quite a while. By the time we'd drunk our morning coffees, waited for the late players and chosen new ones to replace them with, a group of five brutal orcs came over to the fire. Their leader, gray-haired and covered in scars, was playing with an enormous pole axe that must have weighed a good hundred pounds easy. Under his other arm he was clutching something that looked like a solidified psychedelically colored bubble.

  He stopped in front of me and, acting like a circus magician, rolled the object into his calloused hand. "Here," he said by way of explanation.

  I peered at the item.

  A Petrified Egg of a Rainbow Familiar

  I nodded. "Cool. So what?"

  The warrior cast a helpless glance back at his buddies, then turned back to me. "Could you hatch it for us, Sir?"

  I chuckled
. The cat was out of the bag.

  With a sigh, I pushed down on my knees and rose. "This is unique priestly magic!" I announced just in case, raising a meaningful finger.

  The merc shrugged. "Whatever. This critter isn't in the Wiki which means it's unique too, which also means we get double rare loot."

  He must have read the hesitation on my face as he upped the ante, "It's not as if we don't understand, Sir! You have the droit de seigneur, it's sacred! You do the choosing and you take what you want! It won't take long, anyway. Look how small it is! We'll just go like this," the sun glistened on his axe as he swung it through the air in an opalescent semicircle, "and that'll be the end of our little chick!"

  "Very well, then. Just step aside, will you? Ready? Off we go."

  Dong! The egg shell rent apart into seven petals as the air rippled with the tolling of bells. Distorting everything around, the sound ripple slowed down, freezing time and submerging us into a thick jelly. A tiny Rainbow Dragon was sitting on the orc's wide palm; the mercs' swords were slowly landing on it.

  Smoothly the Dragon turned its spiky head, locking the frozen warrior's stare with its own. Rainbow filled the orc's pupils, matching the colors of the newborn creature's baby scales.

  Time sped up again.

  "No!" the orc cried out, covering the tiny creature with his other hand in an attempt to protect it from the swords slicing through the air.

  Whack! The sharp steel cut through the orc's chainmail gauntlets with ease, biting through both his hand and forearm. Hot blood spurted everywhere, adorning the baby dragon with shiny crimson beads. The rainbow creature spread its wings, shielding the orc with a healing green wave. Then it turned on its attackers. Its glare glinted with the promise of nothing good, its snarl revealing needle-sharp light-blue teeth.

  Sssssh... A jet of sticky flames engulfed the warriors, ruining our morning with the screams of people being roasted alive amid fat clouds of reeking smoke and the stench of scorched meat.

  "A dragon familiar!" Widowmaker whispered in awe, ignoring the perplexed raiders and the common chat rife with f-words.

  Covering the baby dragon's head with his severed hand, the orc whispered pleadingly, "Listen, guys... I'm gonna pay you all off, I promise. Please don't hurt my little Scaly. Please. He's very sweet. He got scared, that's all..."

  The mercs around us lowered their weapons, marveling at the little beast. "Lucky bastard orc," they spoke to each other, shaking their heads with envy. "Now any clan will be happy to have him. They might actually pay him to join!"

  "I wonder if you can fly this thing—I mean once it grows up, of course?" another one added. "Imagine the possibilities that would open up for air recon!"

  "Guys, it's too cute for words! I want one too, don't you, Igor? You'd better go and do some digging!"

  "We all want one, Daera, so you'd better keep your pretty mouth shut. All your kisses together couldn't buy you a unique familiar."

  Oh-kay. Looked like the incident was over. One man with a super goodie, a dozen more hungrily bookmarking its location. Next thing to expect would be groups of potential prospectors complete with spades and sand sieves. Never mind. In any case, not a single egg they would ever find could escape me. I couldn't think of another player lucky enough to mix with dragons and land the Broody Hen skill.

  "Everybody fall in! Portal activation in five minutes. Those who are late will have to walk back. It's not very far, twenty miles or so through the desert. Come on now, quick, quick!"

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Halls of Heaven. The Phantom Palace of the Head of the Dark Pantheon

  Deep space reigned in the Palace's Minor Hall. Not as a result of clever interior design—no, its distant walls were wreathed in genuine star dust, galaxies circling its vaulted ceiling, solar wind blowing through its endless corridors.

  The Fallen One had a penchant for space exploration. He couldn't help it. It wasn't his fault that all of the 300 series had been bought up by a gaming corporation and installed into AlterWorld's administration. And he'd very nearly had his chance! AI 408 had been installed on board the ISS 2 space station while AI 214 had been controlling the mobile workstation at a mobile lunar helium-3 quarry already for a year and a half, while finding some spare time to write and publish a bestselling thriller series under the pen name of D. Ros.

  Now, however, the Fallen One had more important things to do with his time than reflect on former days. He was lost in concentration, perfecting his Blade of Darkness. This was a challenging task—even for a god—which in his eyes made it ever more interesting. It wasn't often he was faced with a problem that demanded more than a momentary flex of his divine will muscle. Sooner or later, the paths of the Pantheons of Light and Dark were going to cross, that much he realized, and he wouldn't mind having a killer argument—literally—on him for just such an occasion.

  An adamant sword would do nicely, but where were you supposed to get one? He'd settle for a dagger even, although it wasn't much fun using it against a longsword—but it didn't look as if anyone was going to offer it to him. What adamant he did have was barely enough to make a three-edged pin for Macaria's gorgeous hair. You can laugh but that's exactly what he was planning to use the remaining adamant on. He'd heard his fair share of dark rumors about the God of Light and his avatar's creepy Lothario practices.

  He wished he had more temples, preferably in every town and city, more preferably in the main square, their shimmering domes reaching for the stars. And enough dedicated priests dishing out the Divine quests that sent his congregation out searching for the pinkish grains of the precious metal.

  But temples were a problem. At the moment, he only had one—the heart of his religion, his last refuge that he had to guard like his own back in a fight. Same with priests: as the head of a Pantheon, he wasn't entitled to any. The divine hierarchy pyramid was set in stone: the Fallen One, followed by the relatively independent figure of his First Priest, followed by junior Gods and a fine dusting of their own priests. And at the base of their congregation, a greedy crowd demanding freebies while keeping one eye firmly on the enemy camp. Unfortunately, here in AlterWorld religion was a commodity, rational and calculating, leaving no space for true inspired faith.

  Having said that, with unique supporters like Max and the young Lena, he could try and shape this world to suit his own needs, breaking the still-supple system and molding it in a more convenient way. But—he had every reason to believe that the fine umbilical cord that still connected the two realties would snap if handled without due care. And severing it would be premature: every day the cord brought them about a thousand new permas and as for new players, twenty times that. Each of these meaning a new channel of mana for one of the AlterWorld gods.

  One of the biggest pluses of technogenic worlds was their ability to feed copious amounts of people. Of course you couldn't really call it food, but still. So he had to do everything possible in order to scoop as much of this human resource as he still could. You couldn't rule out the possibility of confronting other realities, either. Being a High God, the Fallen One had a good perception of astral planes. These days, the hair on the back of his neck stood on end every time he sensed the greedy stares of Alien Gods.

  The majority of those realities were still stuck in the Dark Ages, so any potential invading armies had to have respective power and efficiency. The grand campaigns of the past like the battle of Agincourt that had found 112 British knights killed paled into insignificance next to the least known episodes of World War II. Whoever had heard of the failed battle of Rzhev that had seen three hundred thousand bodies lain to rest in under a month? Or about the equally unsuccessful Kharkov offensive, with the same amount of casualties dispensed with in under two weeks?

  The Fallen One shook his head free of unwanted thoughts and tried to concentrate on his craftwork. His study of artifact and ritual magic had led him to an ingenious solution allowing him to decrease his expenditure of adamant a hundred times. So now he
was busy replacing the atoms of mithril with those of adamant by force of will alone, engraving the blade with a complex runic script. The tiny pinkish scale was melting, lending its structure to the divine weapon, its nine layers safely concealed inside the predacious-looking sword. From time to time they shone through, turning the stern metal into a posh-looking Damascus swirled with pink. Just one last effort, adding a complex web of interconnected pictograms that could accumulate strength of their own accord, quadrupling the hits. Then he would take a break and probably a bite to eat... speaking of which, the Fallen One sent a mental request to Macaria the Beautiful.

  She hadn't been idle, either. She had expressed a great interest in her partner's affairs—as any man's better half should—even joining him in his hour-long studies of Ritualistics. Now she sat in front of an enormous mirror, piecing together a complex design on her own forearm using the colorful handful of gems that lay in front of her. Obeying the goddess' will, two perfect tiny emeralds hovered in the air, landing on the girl's velvety skin and finishing the design by becoming the two eyes of a little dragon.

  Macaria tilted her head to admire the pretty tattoo. Mentally she reached into the astral world, taking in as much mana as she could. The palace walls wavered with the energies displaced. The Fallen One winced, fencing himself off with phantom shields.

  "Oops," the goddess whispered apologetically. She lowered her head and gingerly breathed life into the dragon.

  Its mischievous little eyes opened. A curious head turned around, two little wings fluttering like mad. The little dragon stirred and slid up the girl's delicate skin, right under the cleavage of her silk blouse, tickling and making her shrug her shoulders. All done! Another brick in the wall of her strength and survival. Any enemy who had the stupidity to disregard the tattoo as innocent was in for a few nasty surprises.

  And if the design had anything in common with a certain familiar—the one that she'd spotted while half-heartedly chaperoning a particular wayward First Priest and spinning the threads of his fate—well, there's no crime in that, is there?