City of the Dead Page 12

  You used Wave of Fire-I 30 times.

  You destroyed 20 level 15 creatures.

  Charges remaining: 20 of 50.

  ***

  You destroyed more than 10 creatures at least 10 levels above you.

  You received a level-up for one random attribute.

  Wisdom +1 (2).

  Status change: combat complete.

  The space in front of the boy turned into an inferno. Thirty simultaneous walls of fire might sound like a waste, but they were the difference between survival and the alternative—the enemy would have been strong enough to just run through the fire if Tailyn had only used one charge. Or five. Even ten. But against thirty waves that did 40 damage every second, they didn’t have a chance.

  But Tailyn wasn’t aware of any of that. Just like any ten-year-old who’d just been through an enormous emotional shock, he emptied his stomach before flopping down onto the ground, curling up into a ball, and falling silent. He shook violently. Finally, he even fell asleep. Only judging by the moaning and jerking, he definitely wasn’t dreaming about Mistress Bervan’s pies.

  Ka-Do-Gir woke up and stared at the bright light that for some reason had a green tinge to it. The lix had no concept of life after death, so he figured out immediately that he was still alive. The memory of his last few minutes were jumbled in his head, but that was fine—he had a different way of figuring out what happened. His logs told him the story. There would be time to look around later, as the fact that he was still alive meant there weren’t any immediate threats.

  He couldn’t have foreseen or gotten out of the way of the cave-in. The ancient armor he was wearing helped him survive the initial blow, though his personal shield had been almost completely wiped out. If it hadn’t been for the young mage blowing a thousand shield points into him, there would have been nothing left to save. And save was right—to his own annoyance, Ka-Do-Gir had to admit that Tailyn, as the god called the boy, had been the only reason he’d gotten out. The lix didn’t see anything about how he’d been dragged to freedom in the logs, though the list of damages elicited a whimper. Nobody needed him without his appendages. While lixes could heal serious wounds, the same process didn’t work for lost limps. And that meant Tailyn had risked his own skin for naught, as Ka-Do-Gir was headed straight for ritual suicide. That was better than spending the rest of his life an invalid. Having made up his mind, the lix held one front limb up to his mouth to stick the stump as far down his throat as it would go and die, but he froze when he saw the paw. It was whole and intact. Quickly, he checked the rest of his limbs and found that they, too, were in perfect condition. Even the scars he’d earned himself in past battles were gone.

  Confused, Ka-Do-Gir went back to his logs in an effort to figure out what was going on. He found the answer fairly quickly: Regeneration +1 (1). It was an attribute he’d never heard of that gave him the ability to restore his body. After digging into the description, the lix couldn’t help cutting loose a yelp of jubilation—the attribute was unavailable for his tribe per what he was reading, but there in the location of the ancients, the god had gone ahead and added his name as the second exception. And Ka-Do-Gir snarled unpleasantly when he saw who was before him. It was the leader of a small but incredibly powerful tribe of black lixes named Halas, and suddenly everything made sense. The lixes told each other Halas couldn’t be killed, that the god itself protected him. But it turned out he just had regeneration.

  The logs didn’t stop there, however. Ka-Do-Gir saw to his surprise that his regeneration had leveled-up once after a victory over an enemy he knew nothing about. An approving growl escaped his lips when he saw what level they were at and how many there were. Tailyn was strong. Incredibly strong for a level one human. And where was he, incidentally?

  Ka-Do-Gir stood up and glanced down at his hind legs to see that they too had completely restored. The tunnel that was as straight as it was wide led off into the unknown, making a turn somewhere far off in the distance, while the green light was coming from something that looked like lamps only without smoke or fire. A shiver ran down the lix’s spine when he realized he was looking at the light of the ancients. That meant there could be loot lying around.

  Tailyn wasn’t far away. Judging by his even breathing, the boy was sleeping. Ka-Do-Gir went over and gave him a gentle nudge with a paw—it was time to wake up. The little human had saved his life three times already, and the lix felt keenly how deeply in his debt he was. It was an unpleasant feeling.

  “What?! No! Leave me alone!” Tailyn leaped to his feet and began whirling around in search of the enemy. His cards were clutched in one hand, ready to go at a moment’s notice. Finally, his confused gaze fell on the lix, and the boy just about attacked before he remembered he was looking at his partner.

  “Where are we?” In the lix’s mind, he’d just asked a simple question, which made what happened next even more of a surprise for him. Instead of replying, the boy threw himself forward and wrapped his arms around the lix. Then, the mage who’d handled a group of fearsome adversaries on his own burst into tears like a little girl. The few phrases the lix was able to pick out of the boy’s jumbled stream of consciousness put the finishing touches on his confusion.

  “You’re alive! I thought you were dead! But you’re alive! And you’re fine! We’re stuck here—I lost the pick.”

  It took an effort to avoid hurting the kid, but the lix was finally able to peel himself away, shake the boy, and set him back down on the ground.

  “Where are we?” he asked again.

  “It’s called the metro,” Tailyn replied as he snuffled and wiped his nose with his sleeve. “We’re… I… I dragged you here, the hole collapsed, then some monsters showed up, but I burned them up. And after that—”

  “How do you know it’s a metro?” The lix could see the mage was about to start crying yet again, and he’d had enough.

  Mission update: Look for Coordinates. This is a secret mission, so you can’t tell anyone about it except level 4 lix Ka-Do-Gir.

  The shocking news was enough to make Tailyn forget he’d been planning on sobbing away the rest of his life. The god had judged the lix worthy. That was huge.

  “I have a mission.” Sadly, Tailyn wasn’t able to pull up the mission text without the required functionality, so he had to tell his partner what he could remember. The story included what had happened after he’d dragged the lix over to the side of the cave-in they were on. For his part, Ka-Do-Gir wasn’t familiar with the monsters the boy was describing, though the one thing he did know was that there was going to be loot. And the loot level fifteen creatures left behind was presumably very interesting, indeed.

  But just as he was about to head over to their remains, the lix turned toward the tunnel and growled angrily—they weren’t alone. Tailyn saw his partners reaction and spun around. He didn’t hold his cards up to his mouth, however. Even the little experience he had told him there wasn’t going to be a battle right then, which was why he went so far as to place a restraining hand on one of the lix’s paws. It was doubtful Ka-Do-Gir would have been able to do any damage to the creature headed in their direction.

  Fighting ghosts is useless.

  A small, transparent barrel equipped with an array of arms was heading along one of the walls, stopping at each of the dim lamps. The process was odd: its arms shot out, pierced straight through them, and returned to their initial position. That done, it started tugging and pushing on something, after which its arms went back to the lamp in an effort to put it back. Only the whole thing was a show. The lamps weren’t taken out or replaced. After the ghost was done with them, they glimmered just as dimly as they had before, though the ghost couldn’t have cared less. It moved slowly but surely regardless of the result. In Tailyn’s head, the name of the location popped up—the city of the dead—and he realized he was staring at one of those very same dead inhabitants. The ghost, which quite possibly remembered the ancients, went about its work regardless of years slipping
by.

  The closer the barrel got to the cave-in, the odder its behavior became. It flickered, and its shape occasionally distorted itself, but it always went back to its original form. And when it got just a few steps away, the boy saw one more creature, a little box no larger than his fist. That was why he hadn’t noticed it at first. The box was giving off a few sun-like rays that broke through the gloom, the difference between it and sunlight being its many different colors. The rays reached out to the ghost and followed its every movement, even the most unexpected.

  Ka-Do-Gir noticed the box, as well. But the lix only had two responses: ignore or attack. He chose the second, unused to sitting back and waiting, and leaped forward to send the box flying against the wall. With a crash, it sparked and died. The rays and the ghost both disappeared.

  But they were replaced by something else. Once again, the screaming Tailyn had heard from the black creatures broke out.

  Status change. Current status: combat.

  You cannot modify your active deck.

  Opponents remaining: 620.

  “S-six hundred and twenty opponents?” The lix tensed up when he heard Tailyn’s surprised exclamation. And when he saw the mage glance down at his cards in confusion, almost as if seeing them for the first time, he realized what was going on. They didn’t have a shot. The way out was blocked, leaving them precious few options.

  “We have to find cover!”

  Ka-Do-Gir knew he could run much faster than the boy, so he swept him up with his middle limbs and dashed off toward the enemy. Tailyn was in shock. He wasn’t going to be able to take out that many opponents—his wave of fire only had twenty charges left, and the boy still hadn’t tested out the process for recharging cards. And he wasn’t even sure he could have done anything if he’d had all his charges still remaining. There were just too many. Having already kissed his life goodbye, Tailyn wasn’t expecting the lix to jump in like an incredibly uncomfortable but fairly quick horse. The tunnel stretched on endlessly. The cave-in behind them faded into the distance, though nothing changed in front of them as the tunnel just gently and eternally curved to the right. The only change was the growing intensity of the screaming.

  After a minute spent sprinting as fast as he could go, Ka-Do-Gir realized they weren’t going to get out of the situation. Something dark was approaching them quickly from the front. The tunnel hadn’t had anything branching off, not to mention niches in the wall, nothing where they could hide, and they were fast approaching their collision with the enemy. Level fifteen… The lix wondered if he’d be able to so much as scratch one of them. Cutting through their armor was going to be trick, but with his new strength…

  “Wait, up there!”

  The mage was yelling right in his ear. The lix stumbled and slammed his face against the smooth ground.

  “Come on, hurry! Toss me!”

  Tailyn surprised himself with his own agility. He could see the dark horde, as well, and he’d rolled his eyes upward to beg the god for mercy only to see something in the ceiling. Ka-Do-Gir had run up to it quickly, but the boy had still had enough time to notice that it was a passageway. Not a hole; a passageway. And that was when he’d yelled to stop their headlong dash.

  Ka-Do-Gir realized what Tailyn wanted him to do. There it was, his chance to repay his debt. The mage had saved his life on several occasions; it was time for him to repay the favor. After gauging the distance, he grabbed the boy and heaved him upward. The mage disappeared into the hole, and the lix tried jumping up after him. It didn’t work. Even before his attempt, the lix could tell he wasn’t going to be able to jump that high, though he didn’t want to give up. It was too high. The enemy was getting closer, close enough for Ka-Do-Gir to make out their features. The human’s description had been right on the money—they were the nastiest things he’d ever seen. And there were so many of them. They filled the entire tunnel, turning the whole thing into a quivering mass. But as the lix crouched to leap at them and try to do a little damage, at least, the mage yelled down at him again.

  “Take my hand! I’ll pull you up!”

  The little human was hanging out the opening, holding one arm out to the lix. His other arm was latched onto a handle set in a small wall right above the hole. It looked sturdy enough. Figuring he’d have time to throw the mage up one more time if it didn’t work, he leaped, grabbed Tailyn’s hand, and found himself dangling in midair. The boy wheezed but held firm. He even tried to pull the lix up, only he just wasn’t strong enough. Ka-Do-Gir had to do that himself, using his four upper limbs to clamber up the boy. Grabbing the same handle Tailyn was holding, he let go of the boy and shoved him deeper into the hole. The mage rolled across the stone, screamed like a wounded animal, and clutched at his arm.

  They found themselves in a poorly lit part of the metro. The tunnel was something like a wide manhole, only much darker and dirtier. It was only there by the hole that there was room to turn around. But when the lix did just that, he growled—the dark beasts were climbing on top of each other to get closer to the ceiling. Soon, they were going to fill the tunnel and reach the opening. And nothing was going to save the two partners then.

  “Mage, can you roast them?” the lix asked, though he suddenly realized there was no help coming his way. Tailyn was writhing in pain and whimpering like a beaten puppy. Gathering up the cards that had fallen to the ground, the lix was ready to shake the whiner until he explained how to use them when his gaze fell on the wall with the handle. At least, he’d thought it had been a wall, the one Tailyn had been holding on to. But it was a cover. The metallic disk was old and rusted, time having done its part. And while the upper layer had crumbled away to dust, it was so thick that there was plenty of it left. The lix heaved, but it wouldn’t give in. With a roar, he tried again, throwing every ounce of strength he had left into it, and the cover finally gave in with a loud crack. As dust billowed up, it crashed down into the hole, ducking the space around the lix into complete darkness. He ran a paw over the cover. There weren’t any levers or brackets. They weren’t going to be able to pull it back up, and the only light in the space they were in was coming from off in the distance. Apparently, it was another tunnel. They needed to seal it off, too.

  The screaming died away. While the creatures were still there, it was harder to hear them. And since Tailyn couldn’t go any further, the lix decided to take a break. The boy’s groans melted into a troubled sleep. Apparently, the injury was more serious than he’d at first thought, though the lix didn’t have time to think about that—there was a knocking at the cover he’d dropped into place. The black monsters had gotten to the ceiling and were storming the barricade. By then, Ka-Do-Gir’s eyes had gotten used to the gloom, and he glanced over nervously at the cover. Was it going to hold? How strong were the monsters below?

  It looked like everything was going to be okay. Time passed, and the iron barrier stayed right where it was. Meanwhile, Tailyn woke up and groaned again as he clutched an arm the lix thought looked unnaturally bent. But it wasn’t broken. No, it was jutting out wrong the same way it happened with kids learning to climb trees, and that told Ka-Do-Gir what he needed to do. The mage’s shoulder was dislocated. It needed to be popped back into place.

  Tailyn would never have thought himself capable of screaming so loudly. And no, it wasn’t a yell; it was definitely a scream. While his arm had been in serious pain before, that turned out to have been nothing. When the lix yanked on the damaged limb, almost as if he were thinking about tearing it off and eating it, the boy found that what he’d been going through before had been nothing more than a walk in the park. But the pain receded quickly, at least, and Tailyn fell silent. His arm felt much better. And even though it was still aching, the best part was that he was able to slowly wiggle his fingers.

  “Here are your cards.” The lix handed Tailyn his deck. The boy grabbed them and clutched them to his chest, not even remembering dropping them. In the meantime, the lix looked around the dark space and tried to
figure out where to go next. Pitch darkness was behind them; some kind of light was ahead. But Ka-Do-Gir had to doubt the treasure of the ancients was worth their lives—the enemy was just too strong. The mage helped him make the decision.

  “Are we going to find the control room?” Tailyn asked hopefully.

  “That depends on you. Why didn’t you use your cards?”

  “There aren’t many charges left, and I haven’t tried recharging them…”

  “You didn’t even try to fight back,” the lix snarled. “Why not? You’re okay dying without a fight?”

  Yet again, Tailyn’s cheeks flushed a deep red color. How was he supposed to explain to the enemy that he was just a kid who should have been playing soldiers under the castle wall somewhere, chasing imaginary monsters rather than coming up against them in a scary dungeon?

  “You need to grow up, little mage. If you want to get to the control room and collect whatever loot is waiting for you there, you need to forget your tears, being scared, and all your excuses. It’s all I ever hear from you. As soon as anything happens, you whine like a puppy. Think about who you are. Either you’re a partner and we keep going, or you’re a kid and we turn around. We’ll dig a way back out.”