Chapter 33: The Third Altar

For a second, no one in the laboratory moved. Their leader, a woman wearing black robes, stood in the center, raised her hand to point at us. To her left and right, the mismatched Frankenstein-like monsters staggered forward. The apron-wearing man brought his hands up, cloud-like darkness bloomed out from them, and he crouched low, following his creatures.

Dylan and Fred stepped forward each toward one of the undead, Bent behind and to the right of Dylan, bright-blue flames spreading over his forearms as if he’d doused them in gasoline.

Marci, energy crackling around her arms, headed toward apron-guy. He dropped into a crouch, waving his left dark cloud-covered hand in front of him in a circle. The blue-haired lady reached out, seeming to grab the air with her right hand, lefthand fingers moving in complicated patterns, and Marci’s shadow twisted on the ground human-shaped into serpent and twisted around the elf’s ankle. Marci screamed, dropping to the ground and wrapped her hands the shadowy-snake on her ankle, lightning crackling around its outline. Outlined in light, the snake puffed into smoke, and drifted across the floor.

“Fuck!” I said, pulling out my whip, tossing it back, then cracking it forward in the face of the woman.

She flinched, red cut appearing on her cheek, then snarled at me, snapping her fingers. I lanced my whip out at her again.

The monster facing Dylan grabbed at his chest, gripping his new plate mail, pulling the fighter toward its mouth. He rammed Marci’s glowing sword into its belly, straight out the other side. It’s arm grabbed Dylan’s left shoulder, then detached from the body, squeezing into his shoulder, inching toward his neck. Its forefinger lifted up, then stabbed into a gap in the armor.

With his fiery hands, Bent reached over, snatching the arm and it burst into flame, inky-black smoke rising up. He then went for the other one. Dylan stepped back, sheathed his sword and grabbed his shoulder, left hand twitching.

Fred sidestepped past the Franken-zombie attacking him, slamming Ave’s hammer into its right arm, booming thunder as it exploded. The barbarian brought the hammer up, swinging it toward the creature’s head when a bright flash lit up the right side of the room.

Bolts of blue and white lightning crashed into lab-guy’s cloud-shield from Marci’s palms, followed the contours of the shield around and into him. He screeched and twitched, white lightning coursing up and down his body, staggering but planting a foot down firm. Lifting his hands, a black beam extended straight into Marci’s chest.

Eyes closed, mouth as if in a soundless scream, Marci fell sideways, then turtled up, shivering.

I yanked all the harder, coiling my whip around the woman’s arm. Yanking it, she yelled, “Kraten!” and the leather began to grey from her touch, then collapsed into flakes, disintegrating toward me. I tossed the handle forward before it reached me.

She gestured again and my own shadows morphed into serpents, squeezing ice around my legs. Trying to stay standing, mind racing, I drew my gun. Lab-guy punched Marci’s face, pushing her body over and mounted in full guard. She managed to take hold of his wrists as he reached for her throat, but her arms were shaking from the cold now spreading through my legs, as if into my bones.

I fired three shots into the blue haired woman.

She laughed, “Mundane weapons cannot hurt me.” The woman made a grasping move with her right hand, twisting it, and my legs gave out, the shadows slithering up my legs. “Soon, you’ll join my legion!”

Trying to ignore the pain, I changed targets. “Can’t hurt you?” I shot lab-guy under his left arm into his chest.

His clothing rippled and waved as the bullet entered him. He paused, sitting up straight before coughing up blood, and collapsed away from me. Marci kicked him away and stood. Then she drew her own sidearm and fired a couple shots into him.

The frozen coils reached my waist and began to squeeze. I breathed in deeply, exhaling slowly, and tried hitting them with the butt of the gun to no effect.

Turning, Marci dropped her gun, pointed her palm at the woman and bolts of white and blue lightning crackled through the air at her.

The necromancer held up a hand, a dark circle appeared, seeming to suck the life out of the lightning, and it faded away.

The air rippled outward from the woman as Fred slammed Ave’s hammer into her, the boom echoing violently. As she collapsed forward, Fred reached down for her arm.

I was suddenly free, shadows evaporating, and pushed myself into a kneel with my right arm. It took a moment before I could speak, “Fred. Fred!” Then I could finally yell, “Fred! Don’t kill her, we need answers. But make sure she can’t . . . do magic!”

Bent left behind a few burnt arms, none of which were moving now, while Dylan stabbed into the head of the Franken-zombie. Then the other that Fred had left behind, and both ceased moving. Bent caught up to him, pulling Dylan toward the rest of us, both breathing hard.

The woman screamed. Fred pinned her forearm under his foot, bringing the hammer up. She tried to push him off with her other hand, but those fingers were bent in different directions, and she had no strength.

“Fred!” I shouted, appalled, “What the hell are you doing?”

“Making sure she can’t do magic.” He brought the hammer down hard.

***

Closing my eyes, I ignored the almost rhythmic beating on the doors by the horde outside, and pretended I was elsewhere. On a beach in Hawaii maybe, but not the populated one. It’d be nice to have a coconut. I was exhausted. We’d been fighting almost all day and against things that shouldn’t exist. But we weren’t done.

And we had become monsters.

Marci’s soft voice broke me out of my thoughts, “River?” She put her hand on my back, “You ok?”

I opened my eyes to stare at the floor. Shook my head. Looked at Marci as if seeing her for the first time, her blue eyes bright against the blood and sweat on her face, light blond hair matted and dirty, with a few perfectly clean strands trailing away. I pushed the bangs off her face, “Yeah. I’m ok. How about you?”

“The blood’s not mine. Thank you for . . . getting him off me.”

A booming sound rang out from in the hallway and the knocking ceased. But the moans and roars of the dead became louder and louder.

“Shit!” I stood up, running to the double doors, shutting and locking them. I yelled over my shoulder, “The altar! We have to find and destroy it!”

Bentley was over by the woman, cradling her head. Then he set it gently down on the floor.

“Bent, ask her where it is!”

“She’s dead.”

“Damn. Ok. Fred, pull Ave to the far corner. You and Dylan need to defend the room if the doors won’t hold. Bent, Marci and I will look for the altar.”

The room we were in was pretty large and open. The necromancer’s body was against the far wall. From there and off to the left was an open kitchen. I guess even zombie-making evil guys need to eat. The other side had an arched opening into a living room. It had a couch, sofa chairs, a table with a chess board on top, cards, and books lining the walls, a fireplace, a spiral staircase leading up near us, and more doors at the far end.

Bent said, “I’ll go check out the doors over there. God, I hope they have a bathroom.”

“Ok, we’ll head upstairs.”

Loud thumping began, the zombies reaching the double doors to the living space. I didn’t think they’d hold long. Even though they were thicker, they didn’t have the support of a doorframe where the locks met. Fred would be shoring them up now.

The next level up had a large L-shaped hallway that led directly to a bathroom, several doors on the way, and one door at the end of the L.

“I think it’s in that one,” said Marci, taking me by the hand and heading over there.

“Why do you think so?”

“Don’t you feel it? It’s like oppression to me, making it hard to breathe.” We reached the door and Marci moved to open it.

“Wait! All the other ones were trapped. Let me take a look.” The door was wooden, with carved, spiral patterns in its center. I went to touch it, to feel for any unusual ridges, but as my hand got closer, the air shimmered. I backed off. “It’s, uhm, a magical trap. Don’t ask me how I know that because I haven’t got a clue.”

“Magical?”

“Yeah. We need – you know what? Stay here, I’ll be right back.”

Marci gave me a look.

I shrugged, then raced down the stairs to the necromancer’s body. I needed her blood. And to get it, I focused, completely ignoring where this information came from, how macabre the whole thing was, and the little voice inside my head screaming at me, insisting that I was no longer the same person I’d been before landing on this world.

Dylan and Fred were piling furniture against the doors. I raced past, into the kitchen, found a cup, returned to the body. Her right eye was a red bulge, head swollen where the hammer hit her, and foam falling out of her mouth. From the front, she looked like, against all reason, she’d died from poison and not blunt force trauma. But I didn’t have time to investigate the back of her head.

Taking out a knife, I got what I needed, then raced back upstairs.

“Blood?”

“Yeah. I know.”

“Gross.”

“It’s about to get even grosser.” Dipping my forefinger into the blood, I traced the spiral pattern from the center out, adding more blood when necessary.

“Did you learn fingerpainting from an evil kindergarten?”

“Miss Lucifer was the meanest teacher ever.”

“Seriously, how’d you know to do that?”

“One sec.” Upon reaching the end of the spiral, the door became encased in fog, which soon flashed and vanished, the lock clicking open. “That did it, I think.”

“Wash your finger,” said Marci, patting me on the shoulder before stepping past me to open the door.

Inside was the altar, its upside-down candles burning, smoke falling downward. Each of our footsteps sent ripples across the smoke. I punched a candle straight off the damned thing and Marci and I went to work, dismantling it, breaking pieces where we could, pulling the little house part of it down, smashing its walls and roof, kicking it, throwing pieces of it at itself, swearing at it, until finally Marci said, “Hey, the thumping has stopped.”

I closed my eyes, and the next breath I inhaled felt pure, like I was in a forest, surrounded by green leaves, a creek nearby.

The dinging sound rang out:

YOU’VE SUCCESSFULLY DESTROYED THE ALTARS AND COMPLETED THE QUEST! NICELY DONE: YOU’VE GAINED ONE LEVEL. YOU HAVE TWO POINTS TO SPEND

“I just want to sit down somewhere,” I said.

Marci nodded, “Not here, though. We passed a washroom. I’m going to wash my hands and face. You should clean up, too. She might have blood parasites, you know.”

***

“Here,” said Fred, passing me a drink. “It’s gin.”

We were sitting in the living room. We were all too tired to remove the furniture in front of the double doors and check on the zombie situation, but the banging had stopped. I took the drink, noting that he had yet to wash up. I turned the glass away from his handprint and sipped. Shuddered. “Straight gin?”

“Yup.”

“I’ll think of it as a martini. In a whiskey glass.”

“Couldn’t find any olives. Or lemons.” Fred sat down in front of the couch, where Ave was laid. She was breathing, eyes focusing on us and able to hear us and answer questions via blinking but not yet moving. That paralysis worked very effectively on the warriors.

“Where’s Bentley?”

Dylan lifted his drink using his left arm, “He stopped in to say he was checking out the rooms. No idea why he doesn’t want some down time. I just want to sleep for a week.”

Fred said, “We checked the rooms. There’s no one else here.”

“Yeah.” Listening, I could just hear the running water of a shower where, upstairs, Marci was. Getting as clean as possible, given that we couldn’t wash our clothes. Maybe we could pilfer some from these dead necromancers. “How’s your arm, Dylan?”

“Still paralyzed. Thank god Bent killed that thing in time. Sorry Ave, I’m going to get as much alcohol in me before the pain sets in. You didn’t find any straws, Fred?”

“Nope.”

“Too bad. It would have numbed the pain a little, I think, assuming she could swallow.” He looked at his drink, “I hope so.”

“Owe!” Avery twitched, flexed her arms, sat up slowly, tensing, stretching, sitting up, then reached for Fred’s drink, downing it entirely, “Goddamn, that hurts! Oh! Gin?”

“Yeah.”

“Fred,” she shook her head, “you make the strangest bartending choices. And my lips are still tingling.”

Wiping the hair off her face, Fred smiled at her, canines showing, “I’m glad you’re back.”

I asked, “You ok, Ave?”

“Good now. I wish I could have helped.”

“You did, you did. Hey, you should probably take a sip of a healing pot. To make sure you don’t get infected.”

Rolling up her sleeves, red welts appeared where the nails had dug in. “Alright. A sip. But after that, Fred, take me to the bar. I am not drinking gin straight.”

Bentley entered the living room as the two barbarians walked off to the kitchen area. He was stuffing something into his backpack before resting it on the ground, sitting down hard into a sofa-chair.

“What did you find?”

“It’s strange. I know it shouldn’t be, but it is. Basically, living quarters. Yes, these guys were evil zombie-raisers, building a vile-altar-powered hotel to create hordes of undead monsters, but their rooms have closets. Clothing. Personal items.” He shrugged, “Their underwear is clean. I stole some. And socks. Mine are getting rank.”

Dylan had a blank face on, asking, “You want to wear the tighty-whities of a necromancer?”

“You think their underwear is tainted?”

“Probably not. They must have a washing machine around here somewhere.”

“Or zombie servants that wash for them.”

Dylan shook his head, disgusted look on his face, “Gross.”

“Right.” I sat forward, “Maybe there’s some magic that cleans clothing? It’s too strange to think about these guys having a laundry day. Anyways, no, uh, treasure in the rooms?”

“Not so far. But I haven’t checked all the rooms. And there may be hidden safes, traps, the sort of stuff you’ll be good at finding.”

I stared at my gin for a moment, wondering why I was drinking it, but after deciding it really was taking the edge off, took another sip. “Damn. Hey, Bent, that woman. Was she dead when you got to her?”

He looked at the ground for a moment, then up at me. “I tried to get her to talk. She was . . . out of it. That hammer blow to her head, her eye was ruptured, probably bleeding in her brain, too. I gave her a sip of one of our healing pots and it was like I gave her cyanide.” His jaw tensed. “She was probably going to die anyways, but it was the potion that did her in.”

“The healing potion? I thought you didn’t have any left.”

“Yeah, I gave it to him,” said Dylan. “If I got paralyzed, the healing pot better be in his hands.”

“Of course. But why’d the healing pot kill her? That doesn’t make sense.”

“It does, actually.” Bent said, “In hindsight. She was, I don’t know how to say this, of the underworld? The dead side, not the living? Like heaven versus hell, that sort of thing. If you think of our healing potions as being from heaven, or light, or the above-world, if that makes sense, they’re toxic to those who’ve embraced the other side. At least, that’s my best guess.”

“Holy shit,” I said. “There are a lot of unknowns we’re dealing with here. Marci said something like that, too. That her, uh, magic? Powers? They’re electricity, so an above-ground ability. Being underground here reduces her strength. She’s been feeling oppressed the entire time. Had to spend points to overcome the weakness. The last time we leveled, I mean.”

“That sounds right.” He leaned forward, “Ok, so we’re working out some of the details. It appears we are living in an oppositional system. Light/darkness, electricity/necromancy, that sort of thing. I’ve been using fire, so there’s probably an ice version.”

“Oh! That guy’s touch froze me – and Marci! – for about a minute. Maybe thirty seconds. Felt like forever, but I was instantly hypothermic, shivering.”

“Either cold powers are part of necromancy, or he had two differing powers going on. I won’t know until I level more, or we encounter more, uhm, magic using classes.”

“Hey guys,” said Ave, holding a large bottle, shaped midway between a heart and donut, little glass spikes pointing off the edges, “Louis the Thirteenth! This, this is the real treasure.” She began pouring each of us a glass.

Dylan asked, “How’d they get that here? It’s only made on Earth, right?”

I gladly accepted her glass of cognac, “Trade. Though on this planet, that is worth a fortune. This must have been a high-end hotel.”

“Not that high-end. It only has one elevator.”

“A rustic high-end hotel?”

Fred sat down, his weight audibly straining the wooden sofa, “What are we saluting to?”

Swishing the dark brown liquid around in his glass, Bentley said, “Gaining a level.”

Ave finished pouring for herself and sat beside Fred, making the poor sofa grown again, “To gaining a level!” She lifted her cup high, tipping it toward everyone. “And you guys did all the work. Thanks!”

I sat back, holding the cognac up, gin in my left hand, “The lack of zombies knocking on our door, the destruction of the altars, and the peace and quiet and safety we now find ourselves in.”

“Long may it last,” said Dylan.

Everyone echoed the sentiments, “Long may it last,” and we all sipped.

“This is very good. Thanks, Ave.”

Avery smiled and sat back into the couch, “More sippable than straight gin.”

Fred slid his arm around her shoulders, smiling like a sneaky kid, and finished off his glass in one go.

“Let’s, uh, let’s save a glass for Marci, when she gets down here. I hate to break up our reverie, but after we’ve rested, we’re going down to the security room to watch the videos they have of the nanotech attack. Relax now while you can, because we’re not done yet.”

“Boss,” Fred said, pointing his empty cup at me, “you mean after we search for loot. My magic sword is here, I can feel it!”