A magic shop in the Upper Quarter? The Pandas? I felt a cold shiver as I remembered the words of Roahildorn at our last meeting. “If you don’t want to do this the easy way, we’ll do it the hard way.”
The Upper Quarter of Eyre had only one magic shop. I activated a Soul Stone.
* * *
My worst fears proved true. Deja vu: it had already happened once, when Pandorum took Eyre. Slowly, I closed my eyes and opened them back again, hoping that the vision would disappear. But no. And this time, there wouldn’t be any rollback.
The door to the basement hung on one hinge, kicked down by someone, while jagged slivers of glass peered out of the window frames. The place was thrashed. Cabinets were overturned, the floor littered with shards of broken potion vials. A fierce battle had taken place there — the furniture, the walls, and the staircase bore marks of blows, and the fallen unicorn effigy had several arrows thrust into it.
On the second floor, on my way to the bedroom, I tripped over the body of a black cat lying on the floor. Frederic had been burned by a spell of some kind and even in his death had his claws released. He was silently staring at nothing with his glazed-over yellow pupils. I felt my eyes well up with tears of rage. I hope you can respawn, bro.
Weldy was not inside. There was a message above her bed, pinned with a dagger. A piece of paper with a drawing of a steel spider trampling down Sphere.
The emblem of the Pandorum Alliance.
Everything was clear. I didn’t want to deal with them, and they used foul play: abduction of an NPC I had a close relationship with. Evidently, they had been watching me, searching for my points of weakness and soft spots. Bastards; that’s what they were. But how had they done it? Aggroing inside a city almost immediately summoned NPC guards who destroyed the violators. Had some of them distracted the guards while the others “packed” the girl? Possible. In any case, it must have cost them dearly — the guards were bound to chop down more than a few aggressors. But I didn’t have time to think about it. I needed to rescue Weldy.
A fit of cold rage swept over me, not letting me go. I knew that in that state, I would most likely screw things up rather than solve anything, but I still opened the address book and wrote a message to Jerkhan, the leader of Steel Guard.
HotCat: I didn’t think you would stoop so low.
Jerkhan: Taboos and morality are for fools. The strongest come and take what they want!
HotCat: What do you want?
Jerkhan: You know what we want.
HotCat: All right. I have souls for you. Lots of souls.
Jerkhan: Then come to Atrocity, and we’ll talk!
I willed myself to calm down. Emotions wouldn’t help anything. At the moment, I couldn’t get Weldy out of their clutches; all it would do was pointlessly reveal all my trump cards. I had to turn on my brain and think. Revenge is a dish best served cold.
When I got out of the capsule, it was still before 5 PM. Something sizzled and fizzed in the kitchen. Alena was humming a song. I needed to eat something, I realized, and maybe drink something stiff before sleep. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to relax, and the next day promised to be difficult, with lots of bargaining. But first...
I went to the kitchen and plopped down behind the counter. Activating the virtual keyboard, I started quickly typing, my fingers running over its surface. Alena turned around, smiling, and commented,
“You’ve left your...coffin...early today.”
“Yep,” I gave a meaningful reply, continuing to surf the net. My wife came up from behind and put her arms on my shoulders.
“Wow, you’re tense...and what is that bird?”
She was looking at the virtual screen displaying the logo of one of the biggest alliances of Sphere.
“It’s an eagle.”
A golden eagle on a black background, its wings ominously spread was the long-standing emblem of the biggest alliance of Sphere of Worlds, Navy, which united almost a hundred clans, hundreds of thousands of American and European players scattered over several worlds, such as Russian-speaking Hurd, Shiva, or the Chinese clan “Sovereigns.” Navy had a particular trait. They were the most ardent and radical enemy of Pandorum.
* * *
Next day...
“Good morning, Victor.”
“Maybe for some, but others spent all night sorting out petitions. Five hundred tickets, for hell’s sake!”
“What now?”
“Prayers and altars of one goddess don’t work. It’s as if they’re cut off! Players and NPCs are shocked. We checked the logs — she’s caught inside a Soul Eater. Remember that bugged sword? She’s neither dead nor alive. She’s inside it.”
“Funny. Those Eaters are nothing but trouble. Remember the old team’s reports on Taerland? Makes your hair stand up, and now this. Just ban them, for God’s sake, remove them from the game!”
“You think we didn’t try? The Generator starts acting up immediately. Remember the rollback, when Agasyan himself came to us? When everyone got denied their bonus?”
“Hard to forget something like that. So you don’t take risks anymore?”
“Yeah, forget it. We got a real whupping that time. The Japanese was madder than hell for days.”
“By the way, what does he say about this situation?”
“Nothing. He’s cooped up in a capsule all the time, only gets out to eat. Says he’ll solve this via in-game methods.”
* * *
“She’s not back and not answering prayers. Altars are silent, offerings aren’t accepted. This has never happened before! The priests are panicking. Many have decided that she’s dead!”
“She’s not dead. I know that for a fact,” Tao said, nervously
