CHAPTER 548: TO STOP ONE MAN

It was a lie. Of course it was. The demons had read some of the players’ minds, understood their wants and fears. It was like a hacker who read your emails and texts and tried to pretend it knew who you were.

Mason ignored the demon’s voice and ran for the nearest place to climb.

The ramp down got steeper near the end, pathway smooth and worn from goblin feet and wheels going back who knew how long.

Except it isn’t years. The demon still whispered. All false. All a lie. A constructed world built mere months ago.

Mason stared angrily at Apex Predator. Apparently the demon was reading his thoughts, so why the hell wasn’t it doing something? He tried to activate it, and it did appear to clamp down, but he still felt a ‘presence’ all around him, watching, listening, as if untouchable by his power.

You want to destroy it too, don’t you? This place. This prison. We aren’t so different, Mason Wolf. We are trapped here just as you are, created by ‘gods’ as villains in some story we did not choose.

Mason couldn’t shut it out. And he couldn’t argue with it, either. Because it wasn’t exactly wrong. He jumped for a whirling steel beam, grabbing hold and pulling himself to the platform above.

Help us end it. Help us show these gods we will not be their pawns.

“And then what?” Mason shouted, watching the moving, floating ‘structure’ and trying to figure out a way up that didn’t get him crushed. “What happens when we ‘destroy’ this world? There’s nothing else. There’s no ‘home’ left for me.”

There are other planes, Wyrdwalker. You know this.

“All the same,” Mason shouted, then timed his jump and grasped another beam. He was out above the lava now and tried not to think about falling. There’d be no floating Irishmen to pull him out this time. Could he survive it long enough to get out? To crawl/swim through to the edge?

He swung up like a gymnast, tumbling to another platform far enough he almost slipped off the edge. His heart was pounding, and he could hear demons growling and leaping off the construction above.

You cannot kill me, the demon whispered. The mountain will erupt. And all your friends will die.

“Then why bother with guards,” Mason said mockingly, standing and summoning his bow. The first, giant bat-like flyer to get in sight took a Power Shot, screeching as it fell. He waited and shotgun-blast Crippled another into oblivion, turning to drop another with regular ice arrows.

Men can behave very foolishly. Even powerful ones.

“We’re annoying that way.”

Two more dead flyers and Mason made another jump. He was directly under the main platform now, which stretched at least several hundred feet in a wide rectangle. The supports were still swinging around, but they could only move so much and still hold the thing up. He was safe for a moment.

He took the time to look down at the others, seeing them in formation at the edge of the city. They were fighting now, magic powers swirling as a wave of demons charged from the edge. But they weren’t surprised and it looked like the melee were cutting shit to shreds. He grinned, and looked for the best way up.

My army is coming from every side of this mountain, said the ‘Watcher’. Your friends will be overtaken. They will die for nothing, as all your kind has died for nothing. We are not your true enemy.

“Yeah? And who is?”

Mason didn’t have much for handholds now, but he didn’t need much. He climbed upside down, gripping edges and cracks in the metal so small he was holding his weight with toes and fingertips. As a sign of his increasing, natural power, Duality of Strength didn’t even tick.

The creator, whispered the demon, and Mason froze. The being that made the gods, and the worlds. The cosmic jester that laughs as we dance and die.

Mason got to the edge of the main platform, which had a lot more to hold onto. In a few seconds he’d scrambled up and over, finally letting out a deep breath when he was back on solid ground. At least fifty flying demons were standing around waiting, in a circle around the heart.

“Found you,” he said, summoning his Claws.

For once the demon was silent. But Mason had no idea what to do with what this thing was saying. He could pretend like he didn’t care, like what its words meant nothing and had no effect. But it wasn’t true.

He wanted to know if what it was saying was just…a weakness detector, a thing making whatever argument it thought might work from your psyche. Or if it actually knew something. Maybe it represented a flaw in the system’s mind. Or maybe it was a ‘rebel’ robot trying to stop the game.

A handful of demons charged.

They had long, stick-thin limbs, bird-like beaks, and they moved with a horror-movie, jerking gait. But without some kind of deadlier weapon, he knew their only hope was to push him off. He was about to meet their advance and launch his weight into them when he remembered his new magic boots.

He activated them and stepped forward, seeing a slider that had a tree on one side, and a few squiggly air lines on the other.

Blow with the wind, he thought with a grin, thinking of the description, or root like the oak. He slid it all the way to the tree.

His feet felt like magnets, his whole body going rigid as the force rippled up his body. It was so shocking he failed to block, and the bird-demons slammed into him like the world’s freakiest offensive line.

And he didn’t move an inch.

The demon that hit him head on made a shriek and bounced off like it hit…well, a tree. It hurt, but it didn’t hurt much. Mason dropped the boot meter enough to actually move, then jabbed his stabbing Claw through an eye, and tossed another demon flying.

Claws raked across his cheek and chest. A beak slammed into his forehead and bounced off skull. He just stood there and fought like Streak, no attempt to dodge.

His first attacker’s arm came off with a slash, the second bastard’s head. Another two swiped and pecked but he just took it and hit them back. Transformation was pulling his flesh together, and he blinked away the blood in his eyes.

A dozen demons were dead before he dropped his boot meter enough to come forward spitting blood.

“Next,” he growled and spun his swords. He was angry when they didn’t. “Come on, you pussies. Why are you up here? Defend your master.”

The pain flaring all over his body was dying down and the truth was he wanted more. Something in him wanted to humiliate these things. He wanted them to see he didn’t have to take it, but had anyway. That these horrible creatures, rightfully terrifying to a normal man—that even with those long, wiry limbs and monstrous beaks, they were nothing to him now.

He rushed the closest pack and dodged a handful of other blows with the barest movement. He let them attack and fail before cutting off whatever came at him, stepping over demonic ichor and hacked off body parts, roaring back when they shrieked.

“Pitiful.” He unsummoned his Claws. “Is this all you have? This is what you think you’ll destroy a world with? You think you can stop ‘the creator’ with your stupid little tricks? You can’t even stop one man.”

There was enough gap in the demon’s formation now—Mason clearly saw the ‘heart’ behind them. It looked like a vastly more complex version of the machine he’d seen in the goblin fort, but thrumming with sickly red color and a power that dimmed the light around it with rhythmic pulsing.

All around it were pulleys, levers, and switches. It had some kind of panel with a hundred meters and gauges, and the back of it went on like a giant worm filled with tubes and pipes. It must have been forty feet long—like one of those old computers that used to fill a room.

Mason had no idea how he’d even approach trying to figure it out. Carl and Garet wouldn’t have a chance, either. He had to get Lodie up here, or maybe some of the other goblin engineers from the city below. There’d be no choice otherwise except to just start trying or breaking things. That didn’t seem…wise.

You’re making a mistake. The demon’s whisper was getting louder now. I’ve tried to reason with you. My master has the power to give you what you want.

“What I want?” Mason laughed, kicking a severed, twitching demon head flying at the remaining flyers. “Tell me, Watcher, what do you think that is?”

It’s obvious. A world of your own. A place free from the endless war of the gods, and even the creator. A free world for you and your kin.

The son of a bitch was good, Mason had to give him that. But he didn’t believe it for a second.

“And you can give me that? A whole world to myself?”

My master can. Win him the game, Mason. Renounce Cerebus and help him destroy this world. Then he will have the power to give you what you desire.

“Sure. Gamble the lives of every living thing, on the word of a demon locked in a fancy boiler. Who’s your master, then? Famine? Conquest? I forget the names of the four horsemen. Hold that thought.”

Mason turned and ran straight at the edge of the platform. The demons all stared in confusion, ready to fight and swarm him. But he veered towards the side of the cavern where his players were fighting for their lives.

All he had was intuition, but the feeling was pretty strong. He activated his boots again, this time sliding the bar all the way to the little image of blowing air. If his plan didn’t work, the jump was going to be dicey. But then he was kind of a superhero now. He expected he could jump pretty far…

With no time for second thoughts, he reached the edge of the metal platform, raised some three hundred feet above the lava below, at full sprint. With a final grunt, and a memory of long jumping back in his track days, he soared into the gloom. He tried not to look down.

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