Inferno (Play to Live: Book # 4) Read online

  I had my reasons to employ such dire security measures. Aulë was a hundred percent a creature of Light. He'd made fighting evil his priority. And now he was summoned to join the forces of the Dark.

  It's true that in AlterWorld, the boundaries of light and dark were blurred somewhat. But how were we supposed to explain this to the Arch Father of the Dwarven race?

  The Heart of the Temple fragment pulsated in my hands as I walked through the thousand-strong formation. Seven clans, each clad in its own colors, in order of seniority: Longbeards, Firebeards, Broadbeams, Ironfists, Stiffbeards, Blacklocks and Stonefoots.

  I lay the artifact on the Altar, waited for the two to synchronize, then confirmed their merging. In a flash of blinding light, the celestial spheres trembled. The world had just created a brand-new temple ready to welcome its new god.

  I blinked the light from my eyes and pointed the virtual cursor at the Altar, activating its service menu. Minutes seemed to drag as I scrolled through the long list with its numerous dropdown lists, submenus and sub interfaces. Damn those Indian outsourcers! All the while, the dwarves were craning their necks striving to see the invisible, their hands closing around the handles of family axes and hammers as they watched me, a rather unpopular Immortal. This could be my last opportunity to rip them off by summoning a spawn of the Dark.

  Sensing the edgy atmosphere, the Hell Hounds rustled their armor plates shut, forming a defense circle. They just didn't feel comfortable within the emotional crowd.

  Gotcha. Aulë the Smith, the Vala who'd wanted children so badly that he'd made his own against the High God's explicit orders. Out of mountain rock he'd fashioned the seven dwarves, the arch fathers of his mountain folk. Actually, once his deeds had been discovered, he'd been the first to disown them and quite willingly raised his hammer over their heads, preparing to crush his firstborn to dust. But that's a whole other story altogether. Light isn't that pure and homogenous, either, and who knows what shadows lurk in its cloudy depths.

  I caught a suspicious glance of a gray-bearded Dwarven patriarch. A complex combination of intrigue and internal games between the seven houses had raised him to the top as the most suitable figure for the part of the new temple's Chief Priest. I could see he was nervous: even though he didn't twitch a muscle, a bead of sweat ran down his forehead, betraying his inner struggle.

  I gave him a reassuring nod and took a good hold of a conveniently positioned, fancily carved thingy while pointing the cursor at the name. Badaboom!

  AlterWorld shuddered. The Universe quaked. The ceilings showered us with bits of decorative molding. The warped marble tiles exploded with what sounded like gunfire, unable to support the pressure. The heavens creaked their rusty storerooms open, shaking a long-forsaken god figure free of mothballs.

  Pantheon alert! A new force has entered the world! Aulë the Smith, the god of earth and metals, has joined the Pantheon of the Fallen One.

  "Oh," the crowd gasped with a thousand beer guts.

  Steel rattled across the temple as the dwarves dropped to their knees as one, greeting their god.

  "Great Father..." a thousand-strong whisper echoed under the vaulted ceiling.

  The colorful lights stopped their whirling dance around the altar, revealing to us a big shaggy fellow of very un-dwarven proportions. Think Schwarzenegger meets Bigfoot. An enormous hammer looked like a toy in his powerful scarred arms.

  He surveilled the bowing dwarves, nodding slightly in synch with their sincere prayers as he gained strength before our very eyes. He glanced over at the temple and frowned. He sniffed the air and furrowed his massive brow. His eyes glazed over. I'll be damned if he wasn't checking his interface!

  Then we were deafened by an angry god's bellowing,

  "The Dark? What kind of joke is that? Tell me, in the name of Eru the One!"

  That probably wasn't the best moment to stick my neck out but I wanted it over and done with. I cleared my throat. "Sir Aulë, welcome to AlterWorld! Actually, the Fallen One happens to be the Chief God here."

  Okay, so I'd tweaked the truth a little. We had the Pantheon of Light here as well. But we'd have to cross that bridge when we came to it.

  His heavy glare pinned me to the ground. "A Firstborn worshipping the Dark — in my Temple? Who do you think you are?"

  I gulped. These gods knew how to apply pressure. Never mind. I still had my shield — and a lot of god networking practice, thanks to the Fallen One. "I am the First Priest of the Dark Pantheon. I am the one who procured the artifact of divine power, summoning you back to life in this world!"

  A scowl curved Aulë's lips. There I was, a lightning rod for his divine fury. "We don't need priests like you! To your knees, maggot!"

  Well, stuff that! I'd never been known to accommodate the Fallen One even, definitely not this half-forgotten petty Middle-Earth god!

  His godly will, even though considerably reduced by my Divine Immunity, still weighed down on me like a slab of concrete. My joints crunched, my spine creaked. The sensitive hounds writhed on the floor like flattened spots of ink. You really shouldn't have done that, sir.

  Scowling, I repeated slowly, "I am the First Priest. I am the first authority here after the Fallen One."

  "You what?" Aulë bellowed, losing all control. With a heavy arc of his practiced hand, the massive hammer landed on my head.

  Oops.

  Clank! A cascade of colorful sparks highlighted the scene as the tank barrel in Snowie's hands stopped the hammer's fall midway. Aulë growled like a wounded beast. Raising his hefty weapon, he began pounding the troll into the ground. Snowie didn't have time to counter his blows. All he could do was parry them with his mithril barrel reinforced by the joint efforts of Macaria and the Fallen One.

  The Fallen One, where are you! It looked like the show had taken the worst possible turn. Pointless trying to spare the freaked-out deity's feelings. Time to engage our main caliber.

  The Fallen One must have watched the whole scene through some astral peephole as he appeared straight away without any of those stupid visual effects like portal popping and such. His powerful frame exuded strength. Macaria followed him confidently, looking healthy and strong from all the torrents of energy exuded by the hundreds of thousands of her followers who sacrificed themselves every second. I even thought I'd noticed a spider lurking in a dark corner, smirking as it watched this divine lineup.

  "Enough!" the powerful voice bounced across the Temple, its destroying force seeking and taking out the weakest.

  Dozens of hearts missed a beat and stopped. Here and there, distorted faces gasped, struggling for air, glazed-over stares pointing at brain paralysis. Macaria behind her boss' back only shook her head, her waggling fingers sending waves of healing green across the hall.

  Seeing a new and more powerful opponent from the hated camp, Aulë who'd already hammered the troll knee deep into the marble floor left him alone and went for the Fallen One. Snowie pulled his legs free from the stone debris and stumbled after him, frowning, eager to wreak his revenge.

  In an adrenaline rush, Aulë darted forward, accelerating, his shape blurring. The air whooshed its protest, sliced by the light-blue tracer of the hammer rising and falling.

  Frozen like a statue, the Fallen One threw his hand up to meet the blow. Bang! In a flash, diamond shrapnel burst every which way, mopping up the nearest ranks of the stunned observers. Temperature, pressure and the magic tension of the impact had been such that they even changed atomic structures, turning gas into prickly crystals.

  The Fallen One's fingers dug into the hammer, forever deforming the mithril with the imprint of his hand. He wrought the weapon easily out of Aulë's hands and flung it aside.

  Bang! With a short swing of the Fallen One's arm, a perfect right hook to Aulë's jaw sent the shaggy god flying backwards to the Altar. He landed ignominiously on his butt and shook his head like a dog, trying to focus.

  The Fallen One approached unhurriedly. He grabbed Aulë's throat and li
fted him in the air with his outstretched arm like a naughty kitten. "Enough, Vala Aulë. The time of the Last Battle hasn't yet come."

  Croaking, the mountain god clutched the Fallen One's hand trying to unclench his adamant grip. "I hate you..."

  The Fallen One shook his head in disapproval. "Don't be stupid. This is a different world with its own set of laws. The knowledge of your previous incarnations is pointless here — deceitful even. Once you learn a bit more about the deeds of the so-called Gods of Light and compare them to those of the other side — you'll know what I mean. Just take a look at my First Priest and his life path! I know you can!"

  Aulë glared at him. "Never! Never have I been a servant of the Dark! Fourteen incarnations in all sorts of realms, forty thousand years of my fighting evil! It's not going to happen now!"

  "You idiot! What evil are you talking about? Look around you! Actually, you think you can tell me how many of those fourteen avatars are still alive and kicking?"

  Aulë twitched in his grip but didn't back off. "Yes, I'm alone, so what! When the Last Battle comes, Great Eru will summon me again!"

  Struggling to turn his neck, Aulë looked over the kneeling dwarves who were pouring their hearts out in prayer. "I'm sorry, my children... Your time hasn't yet come..."

  Reality shuddered again, ringing like a hundred thousand broken crystal glasses. The god's figure slackened and blurred, losing brightness and color.

  He was disembodying! Wretched Bigfoot! A god's disembodiment caused his altar to lose one level. In our case, it meant simply resetting it back to zero, leaving us with fuck-all and presenting us with another enemy race.

  Plan B!

  I yelled at the top of my voice right into his fading eyes already staring into the eternal void, "Aulë, I'll summon Yavanna for you!"

  For an instant, the celestial spheres stopped their quivering. The last spark of understanding in Aulë's eyes glinted with frustration and hope. "Come again!"

  "Please stay with us! Help us stand up for the right cause! And I will summon Yavanna, your beloved wife, from the depths of eternity for you!"

  Actually, I'd already been considering summoning his better half as our answer to Lloth in our struggle for Elven hearts and minds. The mighty goddess who'd created all fruits and growing things, animals and birds. As the one who'd made the forests of the Middle Earth, she was a ready-made patron goddess to worship for all the Elves, especially the druids.

  "You think you can do it?"

  I cast an apologetic glance at the Fallen One. Okay, so I hadn't put him in the picture. I had this passion for keeping trump cards up my sleeve. Carefully I pulled the second fragment of the Heart of the Temple from my pocket.

  "There! All we need do is finish decorating the Temple to her liking — with plants and emeralds and all sorts of flowers, you know. How many times out of those fourteen incarnations have you actually been together?"

  "Only once," he whispered, coming back to reality while shedding a solitary tear onto the floor.

  A huge translucent gem bounced over the marble tiles. This time I didn't goof up. Promptly covering it with my foot, I stashed it away in my pocket together with the second Heart fragment.

  Then I brushed my hands free of dust and proffered one to him. "Let's do this again, shall we? I'm Max, the First Priest of the Dark Pantheon. Pleased to meet you."

  Chapter Four

  Time: Ten days after the clan's return from the frontier raid.

  Place: The Remote Post situated in the bottleneck passage between the Dead Lands and the Valley of Fear, three hundred feet away from the castle of Tianlong — the ever-vigilant guard of the First Temple.

  Three guards were sheltering from the scorching midday sun under a flimsy awning. Apparently, the clan's leader could afford neither money nor the manpower to build something more substantial, all of his resources tied up in the restoration of the mammoth hulk of his Super Nova castle.

  So far, the watch had been uneventful. They had only stopped a few lone wishfuls wanting to join the clan, an uneasy ranger who couldn't fool anyone with his apparent attempt to map out the area, and a cheeky warrior who'd demanded they let him through because "he had things to do over there and it's a free world, ain't it?" They'd just let the idiot through without even trying to talk him out of it.

  Tianlong had welcomed the rare chance to have some fun. He told the skeletal archers on his walls to hold their fire, then opened his enormous jaws just slightly. The dragon had plenty of mana but not enough entertainment. He gobbled up the daring warrior's identity and digested it whole, providing himself with enough food for thought, then spat out the hapless freedom seeker onto the dusty sand. Once he'd recovered a bit, the warrior scrambled back to his feet and began poking at a small flat charm, activating a portal artifact. He hadn't even said goodbye to anyone.

  Their service wasn't that hard. They enjoyed excellent living quarters, five-star buffet meals and a constant variety of tasks. The next day, for instance, their group was supposed to join the Vets over at the field of Gigantic Fly-Traps to defend the farmers who harvested it — and, most importantly, do their own bit of leveling while mopping it up. The clan took good care of their combat section and their growth in game. Also, mini raids like that one allowed one to keep virtually all of the loot, provided the player paid the inevitable 10% clan tax. How cool was that? Free chow and a place to hunt with guaranteed support from clan buffers, an anti-PK team and on-call clerics ready to resurrect any casualties. And later in the evening, free entertainment and a soft bed in your own palace quarters. Too good for words.

  The post's functions were merely administrative which might explain why the sentries treated their job with a certain lack of fervor.

  One of them made himself comfortable by the bonfire, busy leveling two professions at once: cooking — by churning out jerboa hamburgers that no one could look at anymore — and alchemy, obsessively producing vial after vial of Fish Breath, the cheapest albeit the most boring way of leveling the skill. It only had one side effect: whenever the chemicals from his Small Camp Alchemy Kit failed to react properly, they produced a foul green cloud reeking of old fish.

  The second guard was reading some sci fi. From time to time he startled and sat up, casting anxious looks around. Recently, Russian politicians had passed a law banning the use of any non-Russian operation systems on personal computers — apparently, in order to support the country's economy and protect its citizens from foreign spies. Strangely enough, they came up with quite a decent alternative: the OS PolarBear 1.0. It was fast, easy to use and register, and not too buggy. Those guys could do it when they wanted to!

  Still, everyone celebrated a little too soon. The polar teddy came with a small secret. For the first six months, the new OS did its job ratting on everybody to the secret services, leaking any illegal contents of their computers to the federal servers, complete with any relevant logs, search queries and screenshots using a special built-in camera.

  Then it all came to a head. Thousands of arrests began on a daily basis, starting from the very top of the Internet illegal network: the owners of pirate libraries and trackers, the most notorious releasers and warez sites. Everyone had reasons to be fearful — after all, we all sin in good company. Especially when the wave of arrests and court cases began to reach deeper, trapping even the smallest fry into the net of copyright fines and dues.

  This guard too, a perma with nothing to lose, was now trying to catch up on everything he'd missed out IRL. Oh well — some yearn for freedom even when it's little more than anarchy.

  The third guard, who'd just lost two extra watch rotas in a poker game, stood guard, peering deliberately in front of himself while in fact flirting in a chat with one very curvaceous Elfa. He had no idea that the only reason she had deigned to accept an X-rated conversation with a greenhorn was her own old age. This ancient lady who had gone perma in an attempt to cheat her own death just couldn't break the ice and go the whole hog, giving her rusty
libido a warmup via chat boxes.

  The radar's paranoid whining awoke the guards to the sight of an enormous ogre clomping down the road. He was marked neutral blue on the mini map — like most vendors, guards and all sorts of quest NPCs.

  The guards stood up and unhurriedly checked their weapons. Switching over to service and combat tabs, they walked out to meet the new visitor. Their job description didn't include the need to fight to the bitter end like the three hundred Spartans had done at the narrow mountain pass (which, if the truth were known, had in fact been defended by nine thousand people). The purpose of the Remote Post was simply to meet any newcomers, sort through them, explain a few things to them and, if bad came to worst, raise an alarm.

  The earth shuddered slightly with the rock ogre's footsteps: a ten-foot two-ton bulk of seasoned level-250 warrior, covered in numerous dents and fractures. Oh yes, this one could cross the Dead Lands on his own easily.

  The guards exchanged anxious glances. They didn't have a hope in hell against him if it came to close-range combat. The three of them could only last a minute at the most.

  Quite a few of the clan members had already had the chance to face the two matured Phantom Dragons in the Arena — in teams of five, mind you. Although not quite yet reaching the uncategorized status, the baby dragons had grown impressively, allowing the clan Analyst to assess their level as "two hundred freakin' plus".

  What I want to say is that there weren't many teams that had emerged victorious from those friendlies. That's considering the Dragons' combat abilities were common knowledge among our warriors who indulged in lengthy discussions on the best tactics, gear and the team's composition. And still Draky and Craky were in the lead with an impressive 42:5 score.