CHAPTER 573: A VULNERABLE LITTLE GIRL

Michael flit from shadow to shadow, warping through Razor Mountain in silence. His divine patron had spared no expense. He’d sent a dozen powerful demons from the depths of the abyss, all waiting for Michael’s command with strained patience.

He’d Shadow Walked the considerable distance to the mountain in record time, his powers growing ever stronger. Once inside, he’d found and marked nearly every player without detection.

Two were drunk. Three were sleeping. The others were relaxed and mostly alone, or with women. The disgusting westerners had even taken goblins to their beds.

The greenskin guards seemed pitifully weak. It was likely why the westerners were here—an easy conquest, a source of slaves and resources. No doubt it was why they felt so safe. There was nothing in this place to threaten them.

Or so they thought.

Michael Shadow Walked out of the palace in two jumps, then straight up to a small tunnel dug in the cavern above the goblin’s city.

“Soon,” he whispered to the demonic leader—a creature like a winged medusa, except with snakes writhing over half its body instead of just its hair. “I have the layout now. I’m going to deal with a few goblin servants and guards. Maybe even a human champion or two. And then I’ll call for you.”

The demon hissed and met his eyes, its black swirling orbs glowing with malice. He could sense how badly it wanted to kill him. How much it hated him and every other living thing. He smiled, knowing exactly how it felt.

He tsk’d with his tongue, holding up the gem in his pocket—the protection from planar beings and powers, that would shield him even from the final doom of its master. The demon cringed and hissed in pain.

“Remember who my allies are,” Michael said, pushing the gem closer to the demon’s face. “I have made pacts with beings far greater than you.”

It bowed its head and whined with a nod.

“Yess, Ssshadow lord.”

He put away the gem, confident his point was made. Then he stared down at the palace. He couldn’t decide if a player kill was worth the risk or not. It would likely warn Mason if they belonged to his House. But did that matter? He was far away and being swarmed by demons at that very moment. Was there anything he could now do?

The temptation burned in Michael’s chest. He unconsciously scratched at the divine tattoo.

His spies told him Mason could ‘Feywalk’. But they didn’t know exactly how it worked. Michael’s Shadow Walk took him vast distances, but it couldn’t just warp him a day’s travel in a minute. He had to assume the Baron’s power would be similar. That it would take him at least a few hours to cross such distance.

That was more than enough time to kill anyone in the palace he wanted, if he could get them alone. He battled with himself again and again, but finally decided. It was worth the risk. If he could put down a player or two, it would give his allies more freedom, more blood.

If they were lucky, and moved fast, they might even win.

The idea of Mason Nimitz returning to a goblin palace turned into a graveyard…filled to the rafters with all his dead friends and lovers…

Michael shivered with pleasure and anticipation, his pulse pounding in his ears, his tattoo practically on fire. But it would be soothed and silent soon. Sated with all the blood and suffering it could want.

And he had seen all the players. Some were stronger than others. Some were more vulnerable, and more desirable. He felt his mouth water at the thought of that little redhead. So tiny, so attractive, so alone. He’d probed her mind and found it defenseless. Full of anxiety and fear.

With a final moment to ready his body and mind, Michael focused on the most useful patches of darkness he’d marked out all over the palace. Then he warped for his first round of goblin, and hopefully player kills.

He’d start with the little girl.

**

Annie spent her evening as she did most—reading on her bed, and stroking her axe. She’d turned off her Void Soul, trying to do as Blake asked and limit it to when there was real danger.

Touching her weapon made her feel safe. Good. Like she was ready to fight and kill, if she had to. And because the metal was so smooth and cool and wonderful.

Arminius—the being who had become an axe in the depths of the abyss—was with her, but not really awake. He slept most of the time they weren’t in combat, humming away in some half-conscious state of semi-awareness.

She knew he was some kind of fallen angel. But when he slept he sounded like he was purring. She liked to think of him as a big, dangerous demon cat.

And he wasn’t sleeping well that night. An hour before he’d started stirring in her mind, as if tossing and turning with dark dreams. She gripped his handle and hugged the weapon against her chest.

“It’s OK,” she told him. “We’re safe here. Even though they’re goblins, they aren’t bad ones. And we’re surrounded by friends. And Blake won’t be long. And Haley and the others are really nice. You don’t have to…”

She blinked as the candles around her flickered, the room darkening. She blinked and blinked and then she sat in a familiar, tiny room. She looked at the sci-fi plastic walls, the small table covered in books.

And then she heard the screams. She was back in the tutorial. In the school the system had sent her to before she was ‘old enough’ to take part in the game. And her friends were outside dying.

So much fear, whispered a voice. I’ve never seen such overwhelming, delicious terror.

Annie couldn’t seem to catch her breath. She reached for her axe but it wasn’t there. It had vanished from her grip without her even realizing. It was gone.

“Armi!” she cried, trying and failing to summon her weapon, her protector. Why weren’t her powers working? Where was Arminius? What was happening?

You’re alone, Annie, said the voice. You’re all alone and no one is coming to save you.

Something was wrong. Horribly wrong. This wasn’t a dream. But she couldn’t have been in the tutorial. That was in the past. It was over. She’d escaped.

She ran for the door, throwing it open as she spilled into the corridor. Strange, moving darkness was pulsing from everywhere, moving like a tide trying to grab her and suck her in. She reached for her Void Soul again but couldn’t. It was like she was cut off from everything, like something was blocking her. Like something was inside her mind.

The urge to lay down and give up or hide was overwhelming. But she thought of Blake. She remembered when she couldn’t sleep, how he’d come into her dreams and forced her to be brave. He’d made her face her fears, to finish that night and get out again, just as she had in real life.

She needed the fire axe. Her first weapon. The thought went through her mind again and again. She needed her axe.

Shadow hands swiped at her from all over the dark corridors. She leapt over or dodged away from them as she ran, going for the same place in the tutorial school she’d found it those months ago.

But her heart was racing out of control. Her legs were weak and trembling. She saw that awful orc over her friend, chewing on her throat. She cried out for her friends, for Blake, for anyone, whimpering as she heard the voice laughing in the dark.

Oh I know I should have killed you already, it said, as if sad. But it’s so hard. Your mind is so fragile. So…susceptible. I can hardly help myself. I feel like a cat with a mouse in a bowl of cream. I just can’t get enough…maybe I’ll just take a little bite. I’ll open you up and take a look, and…

Annie flung herself around the last corner, and found her axe. She smashed the glass box with her first, blood leaking down her hand as she reached inside and lifted it. But it wasn’t a fire axe. It was Arminius.

She shivered as power and rage flooded through her arm, her blood leaking into the black blade as it sucked like a hungry child. The sleeping angel woke with a start, his power flooding over her like armor.

“I’m not alone,” she whispered, a tear rolling down her cheek as she felt her friend’s mind again. “He promised. I’ll never be alone again.”

[Title activated: Half Blood (Abyssal). Gain most of the positive effects of the Abyssal affinity, with almost none of the drawbacks.]

The darkness all around turned grey, the ‘hands’ receding as if losing interest, or unable to find her. All her powers blasted back to her mind as her skin went dark as the corridor. She felt Arminius rise up from his slumber with shining eyes.

The shadows tried to swallow her as if in panic.

She activated Void Soul, feeling all her hopes and terrors fly away like the impostors they were. Dark wings and burning eyes walked towards her in the illusion of her waking dream, but Annie felt no fear. Arminius smiled sleepily at her with his yellow fangs.

The other voice vanished, and the strange dream-world with it. Annie was back on her bed, holding her axe, sweeping the room with her eyes.

A man-sized creature in dark clothes stared at her, its body all swirling darkness. Then it turned and vanished through a far corner, a serpentine black blade in hand.

It thinks it can hide in the abyss, said her protector. His laughter drowned out the small voice of the other creature still echoing in Annie’s mind.

Nothing was funny to Annie with Void Soul active, but she did her best to smile in solidarity. She rolled and flipped off her bed, then sprinted at full speed for the door.

She didn’t know what ‘it’ was, or where it went. Whether it was a goblin, a demon, or a player.

But lost in her Void Soul, safe and luke warm and in control, she didn’t really care. All that mattered was the only desire she had left—the desire that wasn’t hers, but was really in her friend and protector. The urge to bury its blade in that creature’s head.

----------------------------------------