Godsword: A Deckbuilding LitRPG (Goblin Summoner Book 3), page 31
It was an obvious thing to say, but it needed to be said. The sudden shock of finding themselves in a burning building had caused the whole party to freeze for a moment. It was a second or two at most, but any hesitation at all could be a fatal mistake.
“The corridor!” Gareth pointed towards the only exit to the room.
The flames were lapping under the doorway and rising up the walls, feeding on whatever material the floral wallpaper was made of.
For a moment Gareth considered activating the recall rod, the runic item teleporting everyone in range back to the tower. It was an
easy way out, bringing them to where it was safe, but it meant having to start the journey all over again, to make their way through the teleport platform and down the mountain. He couldn’t bear to do that, not when there was no guarantee they would ever make it back into the city. Time was too precious, and besides, there was still the chance that there would be people trapped within the house. He knew better to go traipsing about looking, that would mean certain death, but he wasn’t going to leave anyone he came across.
“Hold on a moment!” Gareth said, choking on the smoke as he did. He coughed, his lungs screaming in protest at their contents.
Sarkuran had stepped towards the door, his hand outstretched ready to open it. He had at least had the forethought to put his hand in the pocket of his jacket, so he didn’t burn it on the metal handle.
Gareth had remembered something he had seen in a fire safety video once, back when he was a child. It had been mainly concerned with convincing him not to play with matches which was a strange choice considering most people of his generation had never used a match in their lives. It had a section about backdraughts, powerful gouts of flame that came with opening new sources of oxygen to fires.
“Step clear of the door,” he continued, gesturing for the others to move to the sides of the room.
“Closer to the burning walls, are you mad!” Imelda said. Her eyes glanced to the plinth in the centre of the room. She snatched the ring from it, tossing it between her hands in surprise at the heat of it. She tucked it into her pocket and then saw the look on the faces of her friends. “What? I’m supposed to let an item like this burn?”
“Just move, trust me!” Gareth glared at the wyrmkin. Whilst the smoke was causing her issues she didn’t seem to be suffering quite as bad as the rest. He assumed it was either some quirk of her physiology or that Imelda was just that much fitter than everyone else. “Sark, open the door outwards. Block your body with it and do it fast.”
The demon king nodded in response. He understood Gareth’s reasoning. After all, burning hellfire was something of his speciality.
With a great tug, Sarkuran pulled the door open, leaping backwards at the same time. He wasn’t quite fast enough, the massive gout of flames forcing the wooden door into his face and sending him tumbling. A friendly pair of hands caught him and stopped him from crashing into the burning wall, Imelda stepping in the way just in time.
The gout had been impressive. The oxygen in the corridor nearly consumed the fire had leapt hungrily towards its newest feast, blasting forth into the room and filling it with heat and rage. It slammed against the back wall, spreading to the few patches of wallpaper that hadn’t yet been consumed by flames.
“Come on! Go! Go!” Gareth grabbed one of Sarkuran’s arms and helped him to the feet, Imelda grabbing the other. They surged through the doors, Magda leading the way into the confusing mess of darkness and glowing fire.
Even amongst the chaos, it was obvious something was wrong the with corridor they found themselves in. As the group made their way along it, stepping over fallen beams and rushing past lapping flames, the corridor seemed to stretch. Its length changed by the moment, the magic that had kept it outside of physical restrictions failing now the ring had been removed. The house creaked worryingly, its frame weakened by both the fire and the sudden need to conform to physics. Without the link to another reality from which to draw power, the house was dying.
Gareth could feel his skin pinkening, there would be blisters later, assuming his sink simply didn’t burn off and leave him a walking skeleton-like Henig. It was overwhelming, a frenzied barrage of pain, smoke and light. He had mused privately about how the religions of Acamida had a concept of hell, but now he understood why. With the fires burning around him, with pain dancing across his skin, it was impossible to imagine eternal torment as anything other than this, even if Gareth knew that the truth was far worse.
He found himself in the house’s library. Gareth didn’t know how.
He had been certain there was plenty of corridor left to go just moments ago. He put it down to reality contracting back into what it should be, snapping like a rubber band.
The books were on fire, the mountains of knowledge that had been collected by the duke and his ancestors over centuries burning away in mere moments. It was a tragedy that Gareth couldn’t quite explain. He knew that they were only things of paper and leather, but the sheer amount of information lost weighed heavier on Gareth than he had expected.
Over the sound of the crackling fires, Gareth heard a groan. One of the bookcases had toppled over and the noise was coming from beneath it. The varnished wood had evaded the flames so far, but they were creeping across the floor towards it. There was only a matter of a time before it joined the rest of the house.
Beneath the bookcase was a familiar figure, the same man who had opened the door to the house and let Gareth in, to begin with.
The heavy piece of furniture had crushed his legs entirely, and even if he could survive the fire he would certainly never walk properly again, if at all.
“Jackson!” Magda said, rushing past Gareth and putting her hands on the bookcase.
“Madam,” the valet spluttered, blood trickling down his lip. “I apologise for my appearance.”
“Don’t,” Magda whispered, her words nearly lost over the flames.
“Don’t apologise.”
“If we lift both sides, we can get it off him,” Imelda said, flanking Gareth on the other side. “It must have fallen when the house started shrinking.”
“I must apologise further. I fear perhaps that removing this furniture might not be conducive to my survival. The impact has served only to split my skin. Moving it will only serve to make rather more of a mess,” Jackson said with an upper lip so stiff you could stand on it.
“We can’t leave you here,” Gareth said. He could feel the flames creeping across the floor of the library, the piles of books giving them plenty of fuel for their inevitable march. “Where’s the duke? What happened here?”
“The duke hasn’t returned, and considering the incendiaries thrown through our windows, I suspect he never will. It seems my
employer’s dalliances with resistance have caught up with him. Don’t worry about me, escape whilst you can.”
“No, we can’t…” Magda began before spluttering from the smoke. She couldn’t bear to leave someone to die, not after learning what happened afterwards. Jackson would just become another horrid nightmare, in time.
“You must.” Jackson gurgled for a moment, the trickle of blood from his lips becoming a torrent. “Did…did you take the ring?”
“We did,” Imelda said, her hand reaching into her pocket and gripping the arcane jewellery.
“Good, take it. I hope can help you in some small way, now my employer isn’t around to make good on his promises. Never let it be said he wasn’t a fair man.”
Quest Complete: Purge the fractal maze of monsters.
Reward: 2000 experience points.
Reward changed. 400 crowns lost, gained Ring of Realities.
Runic Item gained. Ring of Realities. Contains a connection to a fractal universe. With proper care, the connection can be widened to provide access.
Level up – Level 29 gained.
Current exp 1474/2290
Six skill points gained.
“We need to leave,” Sarkuran said, putting a hand on Magda’s shoulder in a rare show of compassion. “If we all die here this man’s death means nothing.”
“It means nothing anyway! That’s just it, isn’t it! People die and then get cast into nothingness. It’s not right! It’s not fair.” Tears were streaming down Magda’s pink face and cutting lines through the thin layer of soot that had begun to build up.
“No. Life isn’t fair. Which means it’s all the more important when we can force fairness upon it. Look at this man. He knows he is not long for this world. If we perish with him who will bring him justice?
Who will let the world know he existed?”
“Are we taking on all of Thot’Ankor now as well!”
“Argue later. For now, we get the hell out of here,” Gareth said, grabbing Magda by the arm. “Sark is right. If Jackson doesn’t want us to get him out, then let’s at least give him dignity.” Gareth’s voice had become croaky, and he found he was shouting without realising. He could feel his eyelids getting heavy, the lack of oxygen starting to take its toll.
“Go…go,” Jackson said, his voice dropping further. He was fading, that much was obvious. At least we wouldn’t be conscious when the flames consumed him. “Watch out for the…police…
probably…outside.” He closed his eyes and let his head fall to the floor.
He was done.
***
Gareth sprinted down the steps with what little strength he could muster. The front door had been open, which told him that at least some of the staff had made it out. Any joy he had at the thought was swiftly consumed by the sight of people being funnelled into a waiting coach. Standing next to it were several men in almost identical looking coats and Gareth assumed immediately that there were some of the city’s secret police.
Eric had been certain he was untouchable and now it seemed he was disastrously wrong. The fire made a sickening amount of sense.
The duke’s theory was that a member of the opposition disappearing would be too difficult to hide but if that person’s house had burned down, well, then they had just perished in the fire. Unfortunate, but not impossible.
“You there!” shouted one of the coated figures, advancing towards the burning building. In the distance, a wail rang out, a horrid cry that repeated itself over and over.
“Get ready,” Gareth said, his friends trying to catch their breath behind him. “We’re going to have to fight our way out of this I think.”
“Put your hands above your heads!” the man said, hands reaching into his coat for something. “You’re under arrest for conspiring with a traitor.”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Gareth said.
“Yes, I’m afraid you’re mistaken,” Sarkuran added. “We’re simply visitors from a nearby village.”
“Hands above your heads!”
As one the group flicked open their deck boxes, magic flowing out from inside in bursts of light. In moments they were ready to fight, cards poised to be summoned. The man who had approached them didn’t move, though his eyes fell to the arcane rectangles. It was a look of disdain rather than surprise. He had known that the party were duellists, no doubt thanks to their very public duel with the duke and the viscount.
“Bad choice,” the man said. He pulled back his coat to reveal a flintlock pistol holstered at his waist. There was no deck box, no implement of magical power but he wasn’t backing down. He couldn’t.
His orders were to make sure that no one escaped the fire alive, and failure was not tolerated in the political police. Either the duellists found their way into a coffin or he did.
“You know, not really,” Gareth said. “I know your type. We’ve got plenty of experience with people like you where I come from. You probably think you’re protecting the city from subversives, willing to silence people who don’t agree with you or you simply don’t like. At least that’s what you tell yourself. History shows that people like you are desperate for power but never bold enough to actually take it, so you settle into safe little jobs where you get to lord over the masses.
It’s pettiness on mass.”
“I’ll say this only once,” the man said. “Close your deck boxes and put your hands up. You think you can take us all? You think you can escape? Where will you go? We’re everywhere, on every corner, in every inn, walking every street. You might strike me down, but where will you go then? You can’t fight forever.”
“We can damn well try,” Magda said, the fire in her eyes burning like the house behind her. The fire was threatening to spread to the nearby houses, their outstretched flames framing the goddess like amber wings. “You killed people, innocent people, to get at us! I’ll fight you until the end of the universe if I must.”
“Such fire and brimstone from one dressed in the raiment of an oracle. Do you even know what it is you imitate? Your imitation
besmirches the great goddess.”
Despite the tense situation, the irony elicited a chuckle from Magda, one that turned into a hacking cough as some smoke escaped from her lungs. “Good,” she said with a smile. “Maybe she could do with being besmirched.”
Behind the secret policeman, more of his kind were gathering, four other men all wearing coats that looked nearly identical but on closer inspection were subtly different. The only amount of individuality they were allowed came down to their choice of belt buckle or number of pockets.
“I fear we’re not getting out of here without some significant violence,” Sarkuran said. “Well, I say fear, I’m not afraid to get my hands metaphorically dirty. It’s more a figure of speech.”
“Summon what you can,” Gareth whispered. “Tie them up and we can push through. I’ve had enough of this, enough of this place and its factories and its zombies. We need to find this Godsword thing and try and sort this. Force our way in if we have to.”
“It still might not even have anything to do with our problem,”
Imelda added, keeping her voice low so the agents couldn’t hear her.
“But yeah. We’ve been distracted too much here.”
“On three?” Gareth asked, the others nodding in response.
His countdown was delayed by a bizarre arrival, a large wooden coach pulled by a massive flesh golem, the shaft at the front fused to his waist. The golem had a huge meaty head on its shoulders, but curiously a much smaller human-sized head stitched onto its back between its shoulder blades. The secondary head was letting out a pained wail, a cry that repeated in a pattern that acted as a dark mirror of a siren.
The doors to the coach opened and a horde of skeletons poured out like clowns climbing out of a car. Several of them were wearing bronze helmets with high metal crests. One of them began to unspool a rubber pipe from the back of the coach whilst another pulled a hose free from a hatch in the side. Two of them had begun to lift a manhole from the street. It looked like they were planning on pumping water directly from the sewer to put out the flames. Disgusting, but effective.
“That’s our way out,” Gareth said. “Can’t watch us down there.
One. Two. Three!”
The group rushed forwards, hands reaching for their cards. Light screamed before them, shaping into beasts and monsters. Gareth had repeated his trick from the fractal universe, his opening hand had included an Open the Warrens, so he had doubled its effect with his Spellmaster feat, discarding two lightning blasts in the process. He knew he could easily take out the police with a blast of electricity, but it was doubtful they would survive, and Gareth had no intention of adding wanted murderer in addition to whatever other crimes they would no doubt try and charge him with.
The goblins swarmed forwards, flanked by angels and assassins, quivering nightmares following behind. Gunshots rang out as the police pulled their flintlocks, flashes blooming in the darkness as hammers met powder. Two of the goblins fell, the rounds enough to pass even their boosted defences. Several missed, the accuracy of the weapons left wanting, the curious intermix of summoned monsters and real people working in the duellists' favour.
“Stop them!” one of the coated men shouted, a cigarette hanging from his mouth. “Stop them now!”
The party had broken into a sprint, running towards the now open manhole. Cards shimmered as they added more to their makeshift army, tossing what they could into the battle. The monsters were attacking the agents now, their assaults intended to injure rather than kill. Jack’s adventures as a vigilante had proven that all it took was a thought for the monsters to hold their blows, knowledge he had imparted with only a medium level of smugness to the others.
Gareth felt something fly uncomfortably close to his head, skimming across his hair. It had been proceeded by the blast of a flintlock, one of the agent’s holding back from firing on the monsters to instead take a shot at the duellists. Gareth knew that were it to have been on target his shield would have blocked it, but it shook him anyway. Being shot at wasn’t something he had ever imagined happening to him.
He pushed a skeleton out of the way as he reached the manhole, the fungus filled mass of bone clattering as it hit the ground. Gareth
turned to make sure the others were behind him and was pleased to see they were right there.
“Down you go!” he shouted, gesturing into the hole. “Just jump.”
“Into the water?” Magda protested.
“You want to stay up here?”
Magda didn’t answer with words, instead simply pinching the tip of her nose and jumping through the gap. Imelda followed, copying her friend in trying to limit the smell as she vanished into the dark.
Sarkuran came next, leaving Gareth standing alone at the top.
“Well, gentlemen, it’s been a pleasure. I’ll leave you in the hands of my green friends here, at least until we get far enough away for them to fade. Try and play nice,” Gareth said, giving a sarcastic salute as he did. He took a step backwards and passed through the manhole into the sewer below.
The splash wasn’t pleasant, Gareth landing in water that went up to his waist. It stunk, his mind somehow forgetting the rotten scent from his first foray into the network. He began to wade towards the stone pathway at the edge of the water where his friends had already pulled themselves free.
“The corridor!” Gareth pointed towards the only exit to the room.
The flames were lapping under the doorway and rising up the walls, feeding on whatever material the floral wallpaper was made of.
For a moment Gareth considered activating the recall rod, the runic item teleporting everyone in range back to the tower. It was an
easy way out, bringing them to where it was safe, but it meant having to start the journey all over again, to make their way through the teleport platform and down the mountain. He couldn’t bear to do that, not when there was no guarantee they would ever make it back into the city. Time was too precious, and besides, there was still the chance that there would be people trapped within the house. He knew better to go traipsing about looking, that would mean certain death, but he wasn’t going to leave anyone he came across.
“Hold on a moment!” Gareth said, choking on the smoke as he did. He coughed, his lungs screaming in protest at their contents.
Sarkuran had stepped towards the door, his hand outstretched ready to open it. He had at least had the forethought to put his hand in the pocket of his jacket, so he didn’t burn it on the metal handle.
Gareth had remembered something he had seen in a fire safety video once, back when he was a child. It had been mainly concerned with convincing him not to play with matches which was a strange choice considering most people of his generation had never used a match in their lives. It had a section about backdraughts, powerful gouts of flame that came with opening new sources of oxygen to fires.
“Step clear of the door,” he continued, gesturing for the others to move to the sides of the room.
“Closer to the burning walls, are you mad!” Imelda said. Her eyes glanced to the plinth in the centre of the room. She snatched the ring from it, tossing it between her hands in surprise at the heat of it. She tucked it into her pocket and then saw the look on the faces of her friends. “What? I’m supposed to let an item like this burn?”
“Just move, trust me!” Gareth glared at the wyrmkin. Whilst the smoke was causing her issues she didn’t seem to be suffering quite as bad as the rest. He assumed it was either some quirk of her physiology or that Imelda was just that much fitter than everyone else. “Sark, open the door outwards. Block your body with it and do it fast.”
The demon king nodded in response. He understood Gareth’s reasoning. After all, burning hellfire was something of his speciality.
With a great tug, Sarkuran pulled the door open, leaping backwards at the same time. He wasn’t quite fast enough, the massive gout of flames forcing the wooden door into his face and sending him tumbling. A friendly pair of hands caught him and stopped him from crashing into the burning wall, Imelda stepping in the way just in time.
The gout had been impressive. The oxygen in the corridor nearly consumed the fire had leapt hungrily towards its newest feast, blasting forth into the room and filling it with heat and rage. It slammed against the back wall, spreading to the few patches of wallpaper that hadn’t yet been consumed by flames.
“Come on! Go! Go!” Gareth grabbed one of Sarkuran’s arms and helped him to the feet, Imelda grabbing the other. They surged through the doors, Magda leading the way into the confusing mess of darkness and glowing fire.
Even amongst the chaos, it was obvious something was wrong the with corridor they found themselves in. As the group made their way along it, stepping over fallen beams and rushing past lapping flames, the corridor seemed to stretch. Its length changed by the moment, the magic that had kept it outside of physical restrictions failing now the ring had been removed. The house creaked worryingly, its frame weakened by both the fire and the sudden need to conform to physics. Without the link to another reality from which to draw power, the house was dying.
Gareth could feel his skin pinkening, there would be blisters later, assuming his sink simply didn’t burn off and leave him a walking skeleton-like Henig. It was overwhelming, a frenzied barrage of pain, smoke and light. He had mused privately about how the religions of Acamida had a concept of hell, but now he understood why. With the fires burning around him, with pain dancing across his skin, it was impossible to imagine eternal torment as anything other than this, even if Gareth knew that the truth was far worse.
He found himself in the house’s library. Gareth didn’t know how.
He had been certain there was plenty of corridor left to go just moments ago. He put it down to reality contracting back into what it should be, snapping like a rubber band.
The books were on fire, the mountains of knowledge that had been collected by the duke and his ancestors over centuries burning away in mere moments. It was a tragedy that Gareth couldn’t quite explain. He knew that they were only things of paper and leather, but the sheer amount of information lost weighed heavier on Gareth than he had expected.
Over the sound of the crackling fires, Gareth heard a groan. One of the bookcases had toppled over and the noise was coming from beneath it. The varnished wood had evaded the flames so far, but they were creeping across the floor towards it. There was only a matter of a time before it joined the rest of the house.
Beneath the bookcase was a familiar figure, the same man who had opened the door to the house and let Gareth in, to begin with.
The heavy piece of furniture had crushed his legs entirely, and even if he could survive the fire he would certainly never walk properly again, if at all.
“Jackson!” Magda said, rushing past Gareth and putting her hands on the bookcase.
“Madam,” the valet spluttered, blood trickling down his lip. “I apologise for my appearance.”
“Don’t,” Magda whispered, her words nearly lost over the flames.
“Don’t apologise.”
“If we lift both sides, we can get it off him,” Imelda said, flanking Gareth on the other side. “It must have fallen when the house started shrinking.”
“I must apologise further. I fear perhaps that removing this furniture might not be conducive to my survival. The impact has served only to split my skin. Moving it will only serve to make rather more of a mess,” Jackson said with an upper lip so stiff you could stand on it.
“We can’t leave you here,” Gareth said. He could feel the flames creeping across the floor of the library, the piles of books giving them plenty of fuel for their inevitable march. “Where’s the duke? What happened here?”
“The duke hasn’t returned, and considering the incendiaries thrown through our windows, I suspect he never will. It seems my
employer’s dalliances with resistance have caught up with him. Don’t worry about me, escape whilst you can.”
“No, we can’t…” Magda began before spluttering from the smoke. She couldn’t bear to leave someone to die, not after learning what happened afterwards. Jackson would just become another horrid nightmare, in time.
“You must.” Jackson gurgled for a moment, the trickle of blood from his lips becoming a torrent. “Did…did you take the ring?”
“We did,” Imelda said, her hand reaching into her pocket and gripping the arcane jewellery.
“Good, take it. I hope can help you in some small way, now my employer isn’t around to make good on his promises. Never let it be said he wasn’t a fair man.”
Quest Complete: Purge the fractal maze of monsters.
Reward: 2000 experience points.
Reward changed. 400 crowns lost, gained Ring of Realities.
Runic Item gained. Ring of Realities. Contains a connection to a fractal universe. With proper care, the connection can be widened to provide access.
Level up – Level 29 gained.
Current exp 1474/2290
Six skill points gained.
“We need to leave,” Sarkuran said, putting a hand on Magda’s shoulder in a rare show of compassion. “If we all die here this man’s death means nothing.”
“It means nothing anyway! That’s just it, isn’t it! People die and then get cast into nothingness. It’s not right! It’s not fair.” Tears were streaming down Magda’s pink face and cutting lines through the thin layer of soot that had begun to build up.
“No. Life isn’t fair. Which means it’s all the more important when we can force fairness upon it. Look at this man. He knows he is not long for this world. If we perish with him who will bring him justice?
Who will let the world know he existed?”
“Are we taking on all of Thot’Ankor now as well!”
“Argue later. For now, we get the hell out of here,” Gareth said, grabbing Magda by the arm. “Sark is right. If Jackson doesn’t want us to get him out, then let’s at least give him dignity.” Gareth’s voice had become croaky, and he found he was shouting without realising. He could feel his eyelids getting heavy, the lack of oxygen starting to take its toll.
“Go…go,” Jackson said, his voice dropping further. He was fading, that much was obvious. At least we wouldn’t be conscious when the flames consumed him. “Watch out for the…police…
probably…outside.” He closed his eyes and let his head fall to the floor.
He was done.
***
Gareth sprinted down the steps with what little strength he could muster. The front door had been open, which told him that at least some of the staff had made it out. Any joy he had at the thought was swiftly consumed by the sight of people being funnelled into a waiting coach. Standing next to it were several men in almost identical looking coats and Gareth assumed immediately that there were some of the city’s secret police.
Eric had been certain he was untouchable and now it seemed he was disastrously wrong. The fire made a sickening amount of sense.
The duke’s theory was that a member of the opposition disappearing would be too difficult to hide but if that person’s house had burned down, well, then they had just perished in the fire. Unfortunate, but not impossible.
“You there!” shouted one of the coated figures, advancing towards the burning building. In the distance, a wail rang out, a horrid cry that repeated itself over and over.
“Get ready,” Gareth said, his friends trying to catch their breath behind him. “We’re going to have to fight our way out of this I think.”
“Put your hands above your heads!” the man said, hands reaching into his coat for something. “You’re under arrest for conspiring with a traitor.”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Gareth said.
“Yes, I’m afraid you’re mistaken,” Sarkuran added. “We’re simply visitors from a nearby village.”
“Hands above your heads!”
As one the group flicked open their deck boxes, magic flowing out from inside in bursts of light. In moments they were ready to fight, cards poised to be summoned. The man who had approached them didn’t move, though his eyes fell to the arcane rectangles. It was a look of disdain rather than surprise. He had known that the party were duellists, no doubt thanks to their very public duel with the duke and the viscount.
“Bad choice,” the man said. He pulled back his coat to reveal a flintlock pistol holstered at his waist. There was no deck box, no implement of magical power but he wasn’t backing down. He couldn’t.
His orders were to make sure that no one escaped the fire alive, and failure was not tolerated in the political police. Either the duellists found their way into a coffin or he did.
“You know, not really,” Gareth said. “I know your type. We’ve got plenty of experience with people like you where I come from. You probably think you’re protecting the city from subversives, willing to silence people who don’t agree with you or you simply don’t like. At least that’s what you tell yourself. History shows that people like you are desperate for power but never bold enough to actually take it, so you settle into safe little jobs where you get to lord over the masses.
It’s pettiness on mass.”
“I’ll say this only once,” the man said. “Close your deck boxes and put your hands up. You think you can take us all? You think you can escape? Where will you go? We’re everywhere, on every corner, in every inn, walking every street. You might strike me down, but where will you go then? You can’t fight forever.”
“We can damn well try,” Magda said, the fire in her eyes burning like the house behind her. The fire was threatening to spread to the nearby houses, their outstretched flames framing the goddess like amber wings. “You killed people, innocent people, to get at us! I’ll fight you until the end of the universe if I must.”
“Such fire and brimstone from one dressed in the raiment of an oracle. Do you even know what it is you imitate? Your imitation
besmirches the great goddess.”
Despite the tense situation, the irony elicited a chuckle from Magda, one that turned into a hacking cough as some smoke escaped from her lungs. “Good,” she said with a smile. “Maybe she could do with being besmirched.”
Behind the secret policeman, more of his kind were gathering, four other men all wearing coats that looked nearly identical but on closer inspection were subtly different. The only amount of individuality they were allowed came down to their choice of belt buckle or number of pockets.
“I fear we’re not getting out of here without some significant violence,” Sarkuran said. “Well, I say fear, I’m not afraid to get my hands metaphorically dirty. It’s more a figure of speech.”
“Summon what you can,” Gareth whispered. “Tie them up and we can push through. I’ve had enough of this, enough of this place and its factories and its zombies. We need to find this Godsword thing and try and sort this. Force our way in if we have to.”
“It still might not even have anything to do with our problem,”
Imelda added, keeping her voice low so the agents couldn’t hear her.
“But yeah. We’ve been distracted too much here.”
“On three?” Gareth asked, the others nodding in response.
His countdown was delayed by a bizarre arrival, a large wooden coach pulled by a massive flesh golem, the shaft at the front fused to his waist. The golem had a huge meaty head on its shoulders, but curiously a much smaller human-sized head stitched onto its back between its shoulder blades. The secondary head was letting out a pained wail, a cry that repeated in a pattern that acted as a dark mirror of a siren.
The doors to the coach opened and a horde of skeletons poured out like clowns climbing out of a car. Several of them were wearing bronze helmets with high metal crests. One of them began to unspool a rubber pipe from the back of the coach whilst another pulled a hose free from a hatch in the side. Two of them had begun to lift a manhole from the street. It looked like they were planning on pumping water directly from the sewer to put out the flames. Disgusting, but effective.
“That’s our way out,” Gareth said. “Can’t watch us down there.
One. Two. Three!”
The group rushed forwards, hands reaching for their cards. Light screamed before them, shaping into beasts and monsters. Gareth had repeated his trick from the fractal universe, his opening hand had included an Open the Warrens, so he had doubled its effect with his Spellmaster feat, discarding two lightning blasts in the process. He knew he could easily take out the police with a blast of electricity, but it was doubtful they would survive, and Gareth had no intention of adding wanted murderer in addition to whatever other crimes they would no doubt try and charge him with.
The goblins swarmed forwards, flanked by angels and assassins, quivering nightmares following behind. Gunshots rang out as the police pulled their flintlocks, flashes blooming in the darkness as hammers met powder. Two of the goblins fell, the rounds enough to pass even their boosted defences. Several missed, the accuracy of the weapons left wanting, the curious intermix of summoned monsters and real people working in the duellists' favour.
“Stop them!” one of the coated men shouted, a cigarette hanging from his mouth. “Stop them now!”
The party had broken into a sprint, running towards the now open manhole. Cards shimmered as they added more to their makeshift army, tossing what they could into the battle. The monsters were attacking the agents now, their assaults intended to injure rather than kill. Jack’s adventures as a vigilante had proven that all it took was a thought for the monsters to hold their blows, knowledge he had imparted with only a medium level of smugness to the others.
Gareth felt something fly uncomfortably close to his head, skimming across his hair. It had been proceeded by the blast of a flintlock, one of the agent’s holding back from firing on the monsters to instead take a shot at the duellists. Gareth knew that were it to have been on target his shield would have blocked it, but it shook him anyway. Being shot at wasn’t something he had ever imagined happening to him.
He pushed a skeleton out of the way as he reached the manhole, the fungus filled mass of bone clattering as it hit the ground. Gareth
turned to make sure the others were behind him and was pleased to see they were right there.
“Down you go!” he shouted, gesturing into the hole. “Just jump.”
“Into the water?” Magda protested.
“You want to stay up here?”
Magda didn’t answer with words, instead simply pinching the tip of her nose and jumping through the gap. Imelda followed, copying her friend in trying to limit the smell as she vanished into the dark.
Sarkuran came next, leaving Gareth standing alone at the top.
“Well, gentlemen, it’s been a pleasure. I’ll leave you in the hands of my green friends here, at least until we get far enough away for them to fade. Try and play nice,” Gareth said, giving a sarcastic salute as he did. He took a step backwards and passed through the manhole into the sewer below.
The splash wasn’t pleasant, Gareth landing in water that went up to his waist. It stunk, his mind somehow forgetting the rotten scent from his first foray into the network. He began to wade towards the stone pathway at the edge of the water where his friends had already pulled themselves free.
