Blinking away from the attacks of Criterror and the undead, Laneiran managed to lift Subjugate Mind from Criterror the instant before Dek finished him off. But they forgot Biancanova, and she was casting a nidus of plasma right beneath Laneiran’s feet. The mage girl cried, screaming No-o-o-o! Minus two temple corrupters.
The first zombie hadn’t survived her Elite colleague long, but two more rose to replace Biancanova. Plague Reanimation didn’t require contact, so I raised Criterror and Laneiran too. At my command, the archer stunned Mogwai with Paralyzing Shot. The druid somehow threw off the stun, but then another cast immediately followed and the bear turned into a sheep.
Now both players who had turned undead attacked Dek. I decided the solo adventurer represented a greater threat to the temple than Mogwai due to his damage, and hurried to help my servants. It was essential that we finished off Dek before Mogwai turned back into a bear. We had half a minute.
From what I understood from the class description, Dek was perfectly balanced, had no weaknesses and had twice as many stat points as anyone else at his level. It was incredible to watch him fight; the form and grace with which he dropped his mighty hammer astounded the imagination. But there was nothing he could do against the two zombie players and the Threat, not counting his parting gift.
Seconds before his death, Dek broke the seal on a scroll and the entire area was filled with a burning, blinding light. I survived thanks to Destroying Plague Immortality, but the zombies… When the light began to fade, I saw their skeletons fall away into ash on the breeze.
Done with Dek, now my eyes found Mogwai just as he turned back into a bear. There wasn’t enough time to do anything. He activated a mobile shield and, before I could break through the defensive membrane, teleported away, growling as he left: “Bye, loser! We’ll meet again, I promise…”
I was left alone. The temple’s durability was now at one percent.
There was nobody left attacking it, but the destruction process didn’t stop. The column Dek had been attacking crashed down and cracks spread throughout the altar. I couldn’t feel Tiamat’s presence.
The clan chat exploded with messages. I didn’t read them, just wrote my own: Urgent! All builders and Gyula to the temple! It’s almost destroyed, we need repairs!
It seemed the boys had been at the ready. Only a couple of minutes later, two Depths Teleportation casts materialized at the ruins and my friends, Gyula and the entire temple building crew arrived. Gyula nodded to me, looked around…
“Gods damn it…” Gyula swore. He immediately started barking out commands.
In the meantime, he unloaded his tools and materials, touched the altar and started his repairs. Spreading out around the perimeter, the other workers got to work.
The boys surrounded me and started talking all at once.
“They used sixArmageddons to take out Deznafar!”
“But he managed to kill off half the preventer army!”
“A ton of PuGs turned up too and someone from the Alliance threw an Armageddon at them!”
“Are you going to help our troops?” Infect answered.
“Ours?” I laughed. “Two legates in one area cancels out Immortality. The lich will do just fine without me. Tiamat’s temple is more important now.”
“The guards and Sharkon are protecting Shazz!”
The guards! Embarrassingly enough, I’d completely forgotten about them. I rose to jump to the Stronghold of the Destroying Plague.
But then a stream of notifications hit me:
Player Biancanova, level 382 mage, has decided to join the Desti’oying Plague.
Player Criterror, level 389 archer, has decided to join the Destroying Plague.
Player Laneiran, level 37Q mage, has decided to join the Destroying Plague.
The game interface message made it clear what was happening to the turned players. Or rather, ‘has decided’ gave me a hint. It seemed that once they became undead, they were under my control until their first death, but then they got a choice: change faction and race or resurrect as normal. That made sense. Snowstorm made the introduction of the new race a little easier by allowing those turned the choice.
The counter in my quest from the Nucleus to turn the top players undead still remained the same: 0/9. Apparently, these three didn’t count, and the Nucleus needed the absolute strongest.
“I’ll fetch the guards,” I told my friends. “Once I’m back, we’ll assemble a new undead army to protect the temple from player attacks. You hide somewhere off to the side and call me at the first sign of an attack. Mogwai might have left some anchor here to let him open a portal.
Depths Teleportation…
* * *
The Stronghold of the Destroying Plague stood empty and looked peaceful, but the horizon burned with lightning strikes and spells from all schools of magic. I summoned Storm and flew there.
Far away from me, a dune suddenly rose into the air, trembled and condensed into an elongated triangle around half a mile long. The structure of the sand changed. It began to flow under pressure, turning transparent and gleaming with diamond facets, stretching out into a long spear. An invisible hand drew it back and threw it… I only saw who it was aimed at exactly when I approached and surveyed the battlefield unfolding a couple of miles away.
Scattered squads of preventers were embroiled in small skirmishes with Shazz the lich’s monsters. From the northern skyline, a meteorite rumbled toward the lich, its rising roar drowning out all other sound. A giant uneven crater yawned on the right beneath me, gleaming with dead bones from Deznafar, battle avatar of the Departed.
The monstrous half-mile-long spear drove the lich into the sand and pierced its entire length through the earth. The meteorite was about to land in the very same spot. The lich flew out of the hole in the ground as if nothing had happened and continued fighting.
I didn’t want to fly into the epicenter of the coming Armageddon, so I continued to try and make out the guardians of the Treasury from
