FOREST TWO-ZERO-FOUR IRON
The orb shattered in Peacock’s hand, raining glitter down onto his bed of coins and bringing with it a copper-green smell.
Fantastic. It smells like old potpourri in here.
Peacock snarled at his empty palm and summoned a fresh orb. Four. Four necklaces and forty orbs he’d burned through with nothing to show for it but random smells, sounds, and images.
His eyes flicked around his sanctuary just in case. Each random summoning seemed to do only one or two things, and only for a couple seconds, but it didn’t dull the shock of having a massive, incorporeal sandworm mouth materialize in front of you like the first orb he'd used—or an angry treant, or a giant scorpion. Fortunately, none of the creatures created by the orbs seemed to be real.
Peacock knew a similar phenomenon from other games. Glitches and bugs did unpredictable things. They made objects appear and disappear, sometimes creating blank templates which couldn’t interact with the digital world. In other games, they rarely went away so quickly. Maybe it was part of Immortech’s self-maintaining AI fixing itself.
More important than how the glitches were going away was why they were popping up in the first place. Peacock had come to the only logical conclusion—the orbs allowed him to hack Immortech code.
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The revelation made Peacock giddy. It also made his head pound. He knew just enough about programming to understand how glitches and nonsense code appeared, but not enough to fix or change anything. The fact he had to program with his force of will didn’t make things any easier.
He needed Alainn. She could teach him.
Peacock glared into the orb in his palm, resisting the urge to toss it into a wall. He was so close. The look on Viseral’s face when he’d realized he’d been beaten. The taste of his blood and Nex’s confusion. Peacock wanted more, and he’d be damned if an orb would be his undoing.
Peacock’s teeth clenched tighter, a growl rumbling out as more desperation piled into his thoughts. He wanted to tear every Zenith Flight member apart and Alainn knew how. He needed Alainn.
The pounding in Peacock’s head intensified. Light poured out of his newest orb, washing the cave in blinding blue.
Peacock reeled back as a miniature city erupted around him. Greco-Roman architecture sprouted from the ground, phantom hills and valley overlaid atop his hoard. Open temples held up by fluted pillars dotted between smaller, stouter marble residences. A large fountain stood in the center, a statue of an eagle-like humanoid in Roman armor shooting water from a bow. The largest building, sporting pillars in front of a massive entrance, stood in the north, atop the tallest hill in the city.
REBIRTH PLAYER HANDLE 001IM125D LOCATED
CURRENT LOCATION: GENUA
CURRENT CHARACTER: HAVEN
The orb shattered, taking with it the visage of the city.
Peacock stared at the shards. Had he done it? Had he actually found Alainn? Aisha had given him nothing concrete. For all he knew, he was about to walk into a Zenith Flight raid. But it could be Alainn. Just the thought of seeing her again filled Peacock with warmth and excitement. It was worth the risk. If there was the slimmest chance he would see her again, he’d risk everything.