The War (Play to Live: Book #6) (20 page)

Slicing the patient’s wrist open with his sharp fingernail, Asclepius synthesized some sort of solution of a poisonous green color in his mouth and spat it into the open wound. The god tilted his head and waited for his cure to take effect.

After ten seconds, nothing happened, and he frowned. The god put his other hand on the prince’s chest and administered a series of brief shocks. He bent over the trembling body and breathed into it, filling it with oxygen and divine energy. This patient wouldn’t need any atropine.

The prince drew in a deep breath, then had a fit of coughing and began to thrash, struggling against the warriors who were holding him down. A body without a mind; that’s something I had already seen in Asmodeus’ kingdom. It was a dreadful sight, worse than any mental case.

Asclepius reached for the prince’s soul which was slipping away.
Crack!
A magical discharge sank into the god’s aura, making him flinch. The Property Mark obeyed no one. Its sole principle of identification was “friend-or-foe.”

The healer was a foe and paid for it. The damaged part of his astral layer disappeared behind turbid foam.

"This is what you’re dragging me into," the god grumbled and bathed the prince’s soul in a stream of clean energy, burning off all the foreign elements. Then the god chopped off Lloth’s covetous threads. The off-line spell modules couldn’t resist a direct divine intervention.

Asclepius listened to something, then shook his head in surprise. "Well I’ll be…It worked."

He lightly clapped his hands, and the dazzlingly clear soul orb promptly entered its physical carrier.

In a second, the prince’s body stopped its seizure-like thrashing. He opened his eyes, looked at all those present with recognition in his eyes, then nodded his thanks to the god. "I am grateful to you for the miracle, Asclepius. I will personally build you a Minor Altar in the citadel of the House of Night. I’ll keep my word even if I have to empty all the artifact stores of my ancestors. I’ll take the brick of Archdemons’ hardened blood, may the Patriarch of the Dark Pantheon forgive me. It is a source of magic clear as a unicorn’s tear. We were able to hide it from the avid inquisitionists of Light. Your altar will also have accumulating stones the size of an emerald dragon’s head. I hope you will sanctify the altar with your presence."

The god smiled with content, nodded favorably and winked spitefully at my solar plexus, where my greedy pig was nearly having a heart attack. Gods can see really deep…

Asclepius rose and rubbed his hands together. "So, any other patients with similar symptoms here? No? And if I find one?"

Noticing my dumbfounded expression, Asclepius gave a joyous horselaugh. He sure learned a lot from digging through my head...I was like an open book to him now, and my knowledge was his.
I need to change a few passwords just in case
.
Also hide a few current transactions and a few secret tabs
.
Come on, goddammit!

I decided to puzzle the god in revenge.
Here’s a raw lemon to wipe that satisfied look off your face
.

"Asclepius," I said, "could you look after Eilistraee’s altar until she comes back?"

The god raised his brows in astonishment. "But whom am I to guard it from? The forces of Light? Or..." he looked at me insidiously. "The Dark?"

I made a resolute gesture with my hand. "From all of us!"

Perhaps the Good Chaos would give me credit for this?

The god pensively scratched his head, assessing the situation as he gave me a very serious look. At last, he nodded decidedly. "I accept your request."

Status alert! Your deeds determine your path.

<_untitled_> Pantheon has gained a Name.

It is now called Pantheon of Balance.

By following through with their decisions and being under the patronage of the Great Balance, the gods of this pantheon gain additional Strength.

Now it was my turn to be stupid.

At that moment, we heard Hestia’s triumphant laughter up in the sky along with the choked squeak of the Fairest One. It was pretty clear who was winning.

Asclepius didn’t just stand back. He muttered something under his breath, activating new skills, creating a layer of shields around him and summoning Phantom Guards of outrageously high levels. Some anti-war god he was!

At this point, he owed me big time. Without me he would’ve never stepped upon the path of Strength. He would’ve still been practicing medicine thousands of years from now, treating runny noses and virtual haemorrhoids.

I looked at the prince. Ruata was crying from joy, her face pressed into his chest. I sighed sadly.
It is good fish if it were but caught
…The Drow had charmed me. And I remembered how she would use her power to pressure me, to tame me like a silly calf and gently lead me to the slaughterhouse.

I caught her husband’s eyes and briefly saluted him as my equal.
Live! And do not die again! For I might not be around next time.
And I wasn’t willing to risk my Spark again. The poor thing had grown so dim.

I shivered with cold, wrapping my arms around me trying to protect the exhausted Flame of the Creator. I nodded to my officers who were waiting impatiently. "Let’s go, boys. We’ll talk outside."

It was loud out in the Temple yard. The trophy team fussed with the loot, trying to sort and classify it. The rangers and other gatherers were disemboweling spider carcasses, cutting out chitin plates with butchering knives and digging through piles of bluish innards.

A group of staff officers briefly interrogated a warrior who had committed some offence. He was either a rat, or the Our Cause is Right buff had somehow reduced his damage to zero, which was extremely suspicious.

Dan stood on the steps, looking pale. He was watching the clouds, his head tilted back. I was very glad to see him. To be honest, I was worried for his sanity. To suddenly find yourself cut off from your wife and kids, to be out of touch with everything that makes your life meaningful – that’s hard to survive.

"Hey, bro!" I called. "Whatcha see up there? Is it gonna rain?"

Dan was in no joking mood. He turned to me and shook my oustretched hand. I saw a definite thirst for life in his eyes. "Plane…" he said with delight and smiled.

"Huh?"

I frowned as my eyes swept the clouds. The others were shouting, pointing at the blue sky. One of the wizards kindly cast a group Eagle Vision.

I saw it; a four-engine passenger plane flying at an altitude of about 30,000 feet, leaving a crisp condensation trail and slightly altering its course as if trying to find familiar landmarks and the outlines of a landing strip.

"What the hell?" I breathed.

"It’s the aftermath of the splitting of the worlds," Dan concluded with content. "While you were dealing with your bug problem, I visited different clusters, monitored chats and collected rumors. You know, in case the separation isn’t final, in case there are still ways to travel between the two worlds."

"And? Did you find any?" I asked, leaning forward. Information like this was of extreme strategical importance.

"Not yet. But I’ve seen a bunch of anomalies. The two worlds got torn apart too suddenly and roughly. Like a giant took pity on Siamese twins and just ripped them in two the best he could, by hand. Look what I got on the market square of the City of Light."

Dan reached into his spatial pocket and pulled out a heavy oval window with the painfull familiar "Do not lean on door" sign. Pleased to see me shocked, he even let me scratch the glass with my fingernail.

"A genuine Metrowagonmash," he commented. "None of that Mercedes-style modern replica crap! One crafty-ass dwarf sold it to me by weight for silver. Said it was a unique artifact with unknown properties and that he can get me fifty more, some of them – with colored pictures. You follow?"

I nodded. "You think there’s an abandoned ad-covered subway car somewhere?"

Dan chuckled. "You’re missing the big picture. What if there’s a whole station underground? Or even Moscow’s entire subway system?"

I bit my lip. Kilotons of technogenic artifacts, a series of underground tunnels and secret weapon stashes – this really had potential. Especially if…

"And people?" I asked. "Did any people get carried over here?"

Dan squinted his eyes as if trying to make out a faraway target. "It is rumored that some did. All I saw was an odd group of nameless headstones shaped like crosses. The guard ogre was muttering something about a ‘rain of humans.’ Maybe someone really did get transported from their twenty-story apartment right to the City of Light, but how would we prove it?"

"Have you tried to resurrect them?" I inquired, scratching my brow.

Dan went pale. He hurriedly felt his pockets, then cussed and yelled at someone to the side: "Resurrection scrolls, now! All ya have. And a portal to the City of Light. Move! Max, mind sending an order to search empty headstones into the chat?"

I nodded. Dan was on the right rack now and would dig up everything there was. He had a very strong incentive: to get back to his family or at least find them among the forced immigrants of AlterWorld. This man would move mountains with a spoon.

Activating the Alliance control panel, I gave a high priority order. Everyone was to keep a sharp eye out for any unusual-looking objects, especially technogenic artifacts and human footprints or remains. Take screenshots and coordinates and claim the objects as our clan’s property whenever possible.

"Hey, boys, who wants a watermelon?" came someone’s voice.

I looked up, dumbfounded, and tried to see through the dull, semitransparent interface windows. Cussing, I minimized the menus into the tray.

It was a real watermelon! A plant that didn’t exist in AlterWorld was being eaten right in front of us. By a ranger of the deep reconnaissance group who stood but five paces away from Dan. He carefully spat out all the seeds into his palm.

"We want some too!" the others said, reaching their hands out to him.

He took out his rare blade made of the fossilized tooth of a Megalodon. It easily sliced through the
<_Unidentified_plant_162_Error_HEX_001011111_>
. Those around the ranger stopped drooling for a second and looked at the man with respect. This type of knife indicated that its owner was either one lucky devil loved by all the gods, or a first rate genius geek.

Let’s assume that it was possible to level up to the Great Master of Fishing status. Especially if one really enjoyed sitting by a pond for hours on end. But the rest had to be the work of the great Belorussian random; it probably increased the chances of receiving this artifact to be one in a million.

The fossil shark’s tooth was one of the dozen treasures at the bottom of the Dead Ocean. In our days, the ocean was the deserts of the Frontier with their scarce ponds in deadly oases. One rare and spectacular sight you could catch there was one man fishing while guarded by a blood-covered, exhausted mercenary group. Brezhnev on a fishing trip in a combat zone, no less!

Crack!
The watermelon crunched under the plain-looking blade.

Squelch-squelch!
A dozen sentients sank their beautiful teeth into the juicy pulp. The fangs of orcs and elves, the goblins’ shiny incisors, and the indestructible molars of the trolls tore the fruit flesh apart. Even an NPC dwarf – the only survivor of the Drunk Division – was chewing with a thoughtful expression on his face, warily savoring the giant berry.

"Peeps, look what I caught!" a falconer druid broke the silence. He used tamed winged animals for a rather bad high-altitude reconnaissance. The feathered birds of prey had peculiar eyesight; their vision was like looking at a black and white photo through a drop of murky water.

His shoulder strap, which was always covered with bird droppings, was now empty. Either his falcon got eaten or was flying in circles high up in the sky, awaiting the next telepathy session with its master.

The druid held out his hands, which were always smudged with dirt as he was constantly gardening. He was gently holding a frightened sparrow.

"It’s an adult specimen," the falconer said proudly. "Level three. Just imagine, there I was, covering a terror group as it withdrew from the independent Ukrainians’ subcluster. I was spent; almost 60,000 square yards sowed with Burr Thorn! I barely had enough mana left to make a booger levitate. Then this feathered thing comes flying by. A sparrow! In AlterWorld! And it’s a buggy one, the system doesn’t recognize it."

Tenderly petting the ruffled bird, he continued: "I knew nothing of the fragments of the real world back then, so I concluded that the bird’s a quest thing, a collectible, or even someone’s runaway familiar. I barely managed to pull out a scroll and cast Wrath of the Basilisk in time. It was enough to immobilize a dragon, let alone this little ball of feathers. Cost me a hundred gold plus a handful of onyx for ingredients. I hit several others, including a lone stealther and a desert lion pride. I had to run for it…"

"So sell it! I’ll give you 500. Kate could use a bird. She misses the real world so much!" a shortish elven enchanter interrupted, carefully slipping his share of the watermelon seeds into his pocket.