Viridian Gate Online: Dead Man's Tide Read online

  The Legion kept its most heavily armed and armored soldiers in the back ranks. The triarii, often veterans with multiple tours of service to the Empire, had seen enough battles to hold when all seemed lost and had the skill and weight to do it. They also knew how to exploit a breach. The back rank of the praetorian formation ran inward and filed through the gap Provus had run through. They hit the already battered mob like a stampede of angry bulls.

  Provus stepped back as four triarii took his place. Appius met his eyes, and the two men laughed as their Stamina regenerated. The heavy troopers laid into the crowd around them. The triarii didn’t have the DPS that Provus and his shock troops had, but they were immovable objects the mob could only break their teeth on.

  “Form up! Get ready for another push!” Provus shouted, rebuilding the spearhead of antesignani and placing himself at the head of it. He ignored the dead civilians on the ground. There would be time for doubt later.

  One of the triarii triggered some kind of AOE, slamming his heavy shield on the ground and knocking a dozen rioters off their feet. Another caved in a baker’s skull with a warhammer. Blood ran between the flagstones.

  His Stamina bar full, Provus shouted, “Who stands before the banners?”

  The crowd broke. Shouts of anger turned to screams of fear, and the front ranks around Provus’s position turned to flee against the press of their fellows. The riot shattered, breaking contact with the praetorian line and withdrawing by twenty paces, still hurling paving stones and flaming objects. The antesignani sheltered behind the triarii’s shields.

  “Five steps forward!” someone shouted from the praetorian lines, and the whole formation advanced, engulfing the antesignani and triarii both as the Legion reclaimed the first third of the plaza.

  Provus and the other shock troops gathered behind the formation. The triarii returned to their places in the back ranks.

  “Tribune Considia!” someone shouted. Provus looked around. “Tribune Considia!” He spotted the messenger and walked over.

  “What is it?” Provus shouted. The rioters were shouting slogans, working themselves up for another charge. The legionaries were beating their shields with the flats of their blades.

  “A message from General Considia, sir!” the woman shouted, handing him a hastily written note. The missive was nonsense, and it wasn’t in his uncle’s handwriting, but the general had included code words that told Provus what he needed to do.

  “Something wrong?” Appius asked.

  “Everything,” Provus said, glancing toward the line of soldiers and the mob beyond.

  Appius laughed. “Something other than the revolting peasantry?”

  Provus crumpled the message and put it in his inventory. “General Considia’s orders. I need to leave the city.”

  “We’ll provide an escort,” Appius said.

  Provus thought of refusing, but under the current conditions, prudence was the better part of valor. “Just get me as far as the stables.”

  The sky rumbled, and a drop of water hit his arm. It was starting to rain. He pulled up his messaging window.

  >>

  Personal Message

  Alan,

  Problem bigger than we thought. Praetorian barracks attacked, Uncle wants me out of the city while he solves the problem. You should leave, too. Will wait for you where we started the hunt. Don’t be long.

  —Provus

  >>

  I STEPPED OUT OF THE doorway from the Halls of Illusion into a storm. I’d wound up on the outside of the New Viridia city walls, several hundred yards from where I’d started. Some time had passed, maybe thirty minutes. I had no cloak—I’d lost that escaping from Thalia and her assassins—just the white tunic of a citizen, bloodstained and singed. I had a crossbow bolt as thick as my finger lodged in my thigh. It felt as thick as my wrist and as if it was made of burning ice. My tanned hands trembled. All things considered, the fact it didn’t hurt more was probably a bad sign.

  The few drops that had been falling when I’d run for my life had turned into a downpour, rain falling sideways, wind whipping the trees. I looked behind me, and the doorway was gone, just smooth, fitted stone and tan brick. I’d walked straight through the outermost wall of the city like it wasn’t there, but there it was, four stories tall and wide enough for two cars to drive on, side by side. That’s a hell of a thing.

  I remembered, then. My name is Alan Campbell, and I died. Not in the game; I’d been surprisingly lucky in that regard, fighting assassins, cutthroats, giant-ass boars, and even a crazy ex who’d murdered my friends with ice and fire spells. I’d survived all that and died in the real world. I had a heart attack at thirty-one. How sad is that?

  Somehow, my consciousness had survived in the game. It was that, or I was a copy, like the avatar you leave behind when you lose your internet connection. Maybe the real me was back in California, drinking beer and getting laid. I could get all philosophical about it, but to be honest, I was cold, my leg hurt, and I wasn’t ready to forever-die. I needed to escape.

  I pulled up my interface and messaged Provus. He didn’t answer. I could only hope he hadn’t left me behind.

  A crossbow bolt thudded into the mud by my feet. “There he is!” someone shouted.

  I took a step toward the trees, and my leg almost collapsed. To call the bolt in my leg inconvenient would be akin to saying Thalia, the mass murderer I’d dated, had anger issues. If I hadn’t leveled my Conditioning skill with the Legion, I might have just sat down and let them finish me, but I’d been a badass for seventy-two hours, and my past as an HR guy was a lifetime away. I limped on, my clothes soaked. A second crossbow bolt zipped past my shoulder. Then horns sounded, and more distant horns answered, some of them ahead of me. This was going to be a crappy day.

  THE CREATURE THAT HAD replaced the Imperial Warden some years ago watched from the shelter of a massive spruce tree. Teams of assassins moved through the Southern Woods. They wore white cloaks and black masks with green-painted eyes. Most carried crossbows. A horn sounded. Their quarry was a ways off but wounded and unlikely to escape. “The Empire’s newest citizen is going to die,” it said.

  The avatar of Cernunnos was silent, the plain wooden mask it used for a face expressionless. The vines that grew from the mask had taken the form of an eight-foot-tall gorilla, with sharp, sixteen-point antlers and stones for knuckles. The warden waited, listening to the sound of the rain. The Horned One could be approached, and even bartered with sometimes, but never rushed.

  “Tell me, Nil,” the Overmind finally rumbled. “Does this seem fair to you? Does it seem just?”

  The warden, whose real name was Nil, shrugged. “He’s human.”

  “He proved himself against the Gore Boar.”

  “He used a pawn to do it. Humans are always using each other.”

  “He is in my woods. Aediculus may allow all manner of injustices and depravity in his cities, but I am not my brother.”

  “Do you command me to help him, my lord?” Nil said, its voice mocking. “Shall I make you a wooden crown? Will you hold court?”

  Cernunnos answered with a long creak, the sound of a bough bending just before it snaps.

  Nil grinned, exposing several rows of sharp, pointed teeth. It had lived, fought, killed, and screwed as either gender of every creature in these woods before eating and replacing the man whose face it wore. This would be the culmination, and probably the end, of its time as the Imperial Warden, but that was fine. That was the great game. Life was change.

  It ran laughing into the rain.

  JEFF BERKOWITZ SCREAMED. The sound was drawn out, repeated like a sound card failure. His fingers and toes twitched as he hung in the air, chin raised, a fish with a gaff through his gills.

  The twenty-something-year-old who called himself Thanatos was rooting through his brain. That wasn’t a metaphor. Jeff’s head had come apart into small, floating cubes at a tap from the man’s fingers. The pain was endless, wave upon wave of it ove
rlapping as it wore him away. He’d forgotten where he was, or what he’d done to deserve this. All he knew was that he’d do anything to make it stop.

  “Almost done,” Thanatos said, for all the world as if it were a routine dental checkup. He slid a black rod, like a stylus or a capped fountain pen, into Jeff’s head just inside of his right eye. Green and orange sparks exploded across his eyes, and the screaming stopped. He wasn’t sure if he’d been robbed of his voice or his hearing, but it felt like all the muscles in his chest were cramping at once. He fought. He used all his willpower to shake free of the invisible bonds, but all he managed to do was flop around like someone having an epileptic fit in zero gravity.

  Thanatos frowned and grabbed hold of his jaw. “Stay still, Mr. Berkowitz. I’m trying to fix you.”

  Spark.

  Memories of his mother staring blankly at the dinner table.

  Spark.

  No one talking to him at school, either afraid of him or indifferent.

  Spark.

  College. His arm itched like fire. Where was Cheryl? Where was—

  “JEFF!” SANDRA SAID, shaking the gangly hardware lead awake. She’d found him slumped in his desk chair, drooling into his red, bushy beard. “Jeff, wake up, damn it!”

  He was breathing, although it was shallow. She took hold of his trapezius, gripping the muscle behind his collarbone between her curled index and thumb, and squeezed as hard as she could.

  Jeff opened his eyes and inhaled like someone surfacing after nearly drowning. His eyes were wide, darting erratically. His pupils were pinpricks. “Jeff, I need you to—” He tried to stand up. “No, Jeff, look at me,” she said, putting her hands on his cheeks. “Jeff, it’s Sandra. Do you know where you are?”

  His eyes snapped to her. He blinked several times. Then he blinked harder like he was stuck in a loop. Sandra didn’t like where this was going. She was going to give him another pinch to snap him out of it, but he flinched away and moaned, holding her right hand to his face. Then he started sobbing.

  “Jeff?” she said softly. “You’re safe, Jeff. Whatever happened, you’re safe now.”

  She’d seen this before, in Ukraine. It was a civilian who’d come to fix the generators, when Russian mercenaries hit their position with mortars. No one was killed, but the contractor was a veteran of the wars on terror, from the early twenty-first century, and the sound sent him into shock. He’d been airlifted out the same day, never to return.

  Sandra looked at the computer screens behind him and saw his vitals displayed. “Jeff? Did you log back into V.G.O.?”

  Jeff nodded, gripping her wrist tight. Tears squeezed past his shut eyelids.

  She swallowed. “What happened, Jeff? Did you see Alan?”

  “I saw Alan. I saw, and then she... and I died. She burned me alive, Sandra, and then there were the dreams. Please don’t make me go back in there. Please.” He was nuzzling into her hand like a child.

  Alan’s body was sitting in a hospital bed five feet away. Oh, hell, she thought. We locked him in here with the corpse. She’d been so focused on her mission and on her own feelings, she hadn’t even thought of it when she and Osmark left Jeff behind.

  She wished none of this had happened, that the Viridian project had gone smoothly, and Alan was still alive. She wanted to hug Jeff to her chest and tell him everything was going to be okay, but she needed to get him out of the building before the NSA cleanup team arrived. It tore her up. It always tore her up when she had to hurt good, normal people and they didn’t even understand why. That’s what made her good at her job, something her handler, Brett, didn’t understand and would never learn. She cared. She felt enough empathy to find the chinks in people’s armor.

  “Come on, Professor,” she said, pulling her hand free. He whimpered. She gripped him by the upper arm and got him to his feet. “Let’s get you outside so you can call your wife. It’s time for you to go home.”

  “YOU DON’T SERIOUSLY think that will save him, do you?” Enyo asked over her glass.

  Gaius stood, leaving his empty glass on the table. “Provus can save himself. But if he’s mixed up in some kind of game between the gods, it’s better for everyone if I get him and you out of the city while I clean up the mess you’ve made.”

  Enyo laughed. “You’ve sent him to his death, Gaius. I can see it. Will the city give you another son for your dedication?”

  “I have a job to do,” Gaius answered. He walked out.

  “You need me, Gaius,” Enyo called after him, pouring herself the last of the wine. “You both do.”

  Three

  THALIA CURSED THE RAIN and whatever kind of portal magic Alan had used to escape her. She’d never seen anything like it, short of the sigil masters of Alaunhylles, and they’d been limited to short distances.

  The last of her Sicarii rappeled down the outer wall. It was Ganuc Nighteye, the young Murk Elf who reminded her so much of her dead friend, Weiz, the man Alan had killed.

  Ganuc came down hard, hands slipping on the rope for the last six feet. She reached down and grabbed him by the armpit, lifting while he scrambled, boots sliding in the mud. He got to his feet and looked at her, scared, barely out of childhood, so much of Weiz in his face. Weiz never mentioned a son and had never shown any interest in sex or love, though she’d offered both. But the Sicarii were often orphans or bastards, and Weiz Anaxios was a killer, not a priest. It wasn’t impossible.

  “Get moving,” she said, shoving Ganuc toward the second team, where he’d be safest. “He’s wounded. Spread out, and drive him into the pickets. The Imperial agent dies today.”

  Ganuc nodded and said, “Yes, Mistress!” He unhooked his mask from his belt and fastened it on, pulling his hood over his head. The Sicarii moved into the woods at a fast walk, obsidian faces and emerald eyes all, in the image of Sophia, goddess of balance. Except for her and the two Dwarves.

  Balance, Thalia thought, her shoulders trembling. What did the goddess ever do for us? She thought of Sathis, the justicar of all New Viridia, now a pile of greasy ash in the East Temple she’d forbidden the acolytes from cleaning up. He’d thought his faith would save him from her, and look where it got him. Look!

  Thalia’s head was bare, her short, straw-colored hair plastered to her head. She wore her best gear from her adventuring days, after she left the Legion but before she settled down to run Lot’s Terrace, a bar on a hill that faced the Heights. Her gloves, skirt, boots, and light leather corset had bonuses to Intelligence and Spirit regen. The silver vine-shaped bracelets on her upper arms increased her damage with fire and ice attacks, although she was a Firebrand through and through. That was the problem. Most of her powers were useless in the rain.

  But she was Mistress of the Sicarii, a title she’d earned and kept through bloodshed, not “balance.” She was the spark of revolution. She was the end of kings.

  And she had people.

  She trickled Spirit into her skin, casting Fire Inside. Her clothes dried. Rain hissed and spat as it hit her.

  She followed the assassins into the woods, sending messages to the team leaders as they closed the net around their prey.

  Alan had killed the man she loved, and he seduced her afterward because that was just the sick kind of deviant he was, and Thalia was going to put him down.

  The rain wouldn’t stop her. She’d choke him with her bare hands if she had to.

  I WIPED RAIN OUT OF my eyes with a shaky hand. My whole body was shivering, and I could barely keep my wounded leg from locking up. My Stamina bar was flashing empty, so I stopped and leaned my shoulder against a tree.

  I understood why Thalia wanted Provus dead. He was the favored son of one of the great New Viridian houses. What did I do? Sure, I’d interfered with the assassination, but Provus killed the Murk Elf. And Titus, the sweet old tinker who taught me how to sell my gear for the right price? He stabbed another one of her henchmen in the brain. I’d stabbed an albino Risi called Mog, but only because he was about to murder a
n unconscious legionary.

  My right leg was streaked with rain and lost blood. My Health regen couldn’t keep up, I was half empty. My best bet was probably to yank the bolt out, but I could feel it grinding against my femur. I was scared I’d bleed to death.

  I took another look at my skills to see if anything would help.

  >>

  >>

  I HAD A DAGGER CALLED Threadcutter sheathed behind my back. The Legion had taught me how to fight, kind of. I could Charm people, but that took time, only giving me a 1% bonus every ten minutes. Suggestions were more direct, but they worked best on people who didn’t want me dead.

  That left Vocalize, Mirror, and Refract.

  >>

  Skill: Vocalize

  Many spells require a verbal component. Vocalize allows Illusionists to modulate their voice and imbue it with Spirit. Each level of the spell allows the caster to use their voice in new ways.

  Skill Type/Level: Vocal/Novice

  Cost: 20% increase in spell cost per effect

  Range: Variable

  Cast Time: Instant

  Cooldown: None

  Effect 1: Shout 10 decibels louder.

  Effect 2: Imitate voices and sounds you’ve heard.

  >>

  Skill: Mirror

  Ever wish you were someone else? Now you can be. Mirror allows the Illusionist to mimic the appearance of another creature. At higher levels, equipment and even skills may be duplicated.

  Skill Type/Level: Vocal/Initiate

  Cost: Variable (Concentration)

  Range: Line of Sight

  Cast Time: Instant

  Cooldown: None

  Effect 1: Assume the color, shape, and features of a similarly sized person. Cost varies with contrast.

  >>

  Skill: Refract

  Death is in the details. Refract allows you to modify the appearance of an object or surface, or manifest basic shapes. Higher levels allow for more complex and realistic changes.