Jace opened his eyes and held his breath.
He had taken the risk of skipping till dawn last night and hoped it wasn’t the wrong decision. After dinner, he and Rock shared a room. Jace had wanted to talk strategy for the next day, but all Rock wanted to do was yell at him for letting him think that Jace was on board with sacrificing him. The orc said it was all for Leah’s benefit. She had to be offered an easy way out of the situation, or her sacrifice would be meaningless. The dwarf insisted on being made aware of any future strategies like that, but when Jace wanted to talk about the next day, Rock wanted to go to sleep instead.
That had been a few seconds ago to Jace, but he knew at least eight hours had passed in the game, and anything could have happened. At first, he didn’t know if the game had woken him because it was morning or something had interrupted his sleep. After a few seconds, he heard a knock on the door and guessed it was the latter.
The big orc rolled over and froze. Sitting on the table next to his bed was all his equipment. He couldn’t be sure it was everything he had carried with him into the module, but all the essential items were there: Diamond Etcher, his chaos halberd, his illusion necklace, his boots of grounding, a damage belt, and several potions. Jace didn’t carry much, relying on his totems and parrying skill for Armor class.
Behind him, Rock stirred on his bed, and Jace saw most of his items sitting beside him as well. Obviously, something had happened during the night, and Jace worried about the ramifications, but as the knock on the door came again for what was probably the third time, he chose not to look a gift horse in the mouth and stored all his items in his inventory. He decided not to wear most of the items, knowing that Joe had said they would still need to look like prisoners. With Esther’s help, he could probably reprogram the illusion necklace to hide his equipment while wearing it, but he would worry about that later.
“What is this,” Rock said. “How did we get . . .”
“Store it in your inventory, and don’t mention it,” Jace said, rising from the bed and walking to the door. He made sure his partner completed the task before answering the knock. Joe stood on the other side of the door, waiting patiently. He looked like a troglodyte again, and Jace mentally thought of him as Djona to avoid messing up the name in front of the wrong person.
“Heavy sleeper?” he asked.
“We needed our rest,” the shaman replied. “It has been a rough few days.”
“I imagine,” Joe said. “I’ve brought some weapons for you to review. The rest of your team is already up.”
Jace left the room and entered the dining hall. Breakfast food was piled at one end of the table, while weapons, shields, and armor lay at the other. Psycho, Draya, and Leah reviewed the items while Esther sat before the food, stuffing her face. If all his party members had their items back too, they were clever enough not to broadcast it.
{I’ve checked their inventory, Jace,} Gracie chimed in. {Everyone is fully loaded.}
“Any idea what happened?” Jace mumbled.
{No clue.}
Jace walked toward Psycho. The ranger inspected a short bow that Jace doubted would be lethal from one end of the room to the other. “Want to fill me in?” he asked once he got close.
“Everything is taken care of,” the elf replied. “I hope you enjoyed your sleep.”
“I trust you would tell me if I needed to worry about anything.”
Psycho put the bow down and smiled up at the orc. “Did you want to fight a god with one of these rusty blades?”
Jace looked at the pathetic collection of weapons and said nothing.
“I didn’t think so.” The elf moved to the other end of the table to find some fruit.
Jace and Rock had been the last to be woken, and now that they were out of their room, Djona let in a dozen guards. The troglodytes stood at attention while the “prisoners” ate breakfast. Once everyone had their fill, they were brought before the guards and put back in shackles.
“You should be able to get out of these on your own,” Djona whispered once one of his guards had secured the orc’s hands behind his back.
{You won’t be able to pick the lock,} Gracie said, after looking at the shackles, {but it looks like the strength factor to break free is exceptionally low. Also, they only leave you Grappled, so your magic users should be able to cast spells. You, Psycho, and Esther can break free without help, but Draya must cast Dragon Strength first.}
The guards led the six characters out of the room with Draya in the lead. They met Pharah in the main hall again, and Jace didn’t bother to eavesdrop on their conversation. It looked like they were arguing over whether there would be one sacrifice or seven. Jace looked back at Snowy, who followed the group obediently with two guards flanking her, no restraints on the wolf. The familiar was smart enough to know what was going on and wouldn’t fight back without instructions from someone she trusted.
As they were led out of the palace and onto a winding trail that progressed upward toward the back of the island and the simmering volcano, Jace worked his way back in the procession to walk next to Rock. More guards had joined them, and it looked like the entire non-worker population of the island would attend this ceremony. Jace saw Djona clutching his scepter tightly and knew the priest was restraining his minions as much as possible.
“Jace,” the dwarf initiated the conversation. “What is going to happen when this is over? Is Leah going to like me again? I need her to work for me. I have deadlines. I’ve already spent more time on this mission than I planned. My operator has had to cancel several meetings I had scheduled for today.”
Jace sighed. He still didn’t have a solid plan to solve this quest, and this player was only concerned about his business. “So far, you’ve given her no reason to like you, much less trust you. When the fighting breaks out, Djona says he will try to control the horde of troglodytes, but I don’t think he will be entirely successful. There are too many of them. You need to find Leah and protect her. The two of you are at a much lower level than the rest of us and will be vulnerable. As a witch, Leah is good at disabling individual characters but will be in jeopardy against a mob like this. If she sees you risking your life to save her, it will have a positive effect when this is over.”
“Will it be over soon?” Rock asked.
Jace rolled his eyes again. He was like a kid on a car ride asking: Are we there yet? “I’m doing the best I can,” Jace replied. “But I still don’t have all the information I need.” He paused as he gathered his thoughts. “You’ve been to the Kingdom of Canaan, right? You’ve seen the plague. What can you tell me about it?”
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Rock shrugged his shoulders. “Not much. Everyone was sick and dying. It looked like it hadn’t rained in months. The trees were brown, and the crops withered. The streams and lakes were dried up.”
Jace nodded. “Leah said something about a Life Spring.”
“Ah, yes,” Rock said. “There was a lake before the castle. From what I understood, it provided water to the entire kingdom. They said it was fed by a spring, giving life to everything. Well, the spring dried up and the lake with it. It was just an empty sand pit when I got there.”
“Did you sense it was magical, or something magical was missing?”
The shorter player shrugged his shoulders. “I’m a fighter. I didn’t sense anything. Do you think it is important?”
“I think when Lamashtu stole Joe and Rachelle, she also took something from the land. The two characters are not native to Canaan; they came from the kingdom of Paddan. It doesn’t make sense that their kidnapping should somehow plague Leah’s homeland.”
The dwarf shrugged again. “I don’t know. I couldn’t find a monster to kill, and I was losing Health fast, so I didn’t stay long.”
Jace sighed and moved away from the clueless player. He didn’t understand how other players couldn’t be curious enough to want to solve the mystery. If there wasn’t a goblin to fight, they gave up. At least Gracie understood.
{I like your thinking,} she said. {And I’ve done a little research.} For the operator, it had only been minutes since they learned about Moloch and the sacrifices, so she hadn’t had much time to look things up. For Jace, he had the illusion of time passing, and it was reasonably effective at convincing him it was the next day.
{We talked about sacrificing things to demons before,} she continued. {Well, I looked up sacrificing characters to gods. They don’t work the same as demons. The only real difference in the game is that gods are primarily defensive, while demons are offensive. When demons are summoned to the physical realms, they require a stronghold. When gods are summoned, they connect to something living and protect it.}
Jace nodded his head. He looked around at the troglodytes marching beside him and saw that they paid the prisoners almost no attention. None of them had yelled at him and Rock to stop talking, and he felt comfortable mumbling to himself now to converse with Gracie. It was much easier than sending texts he had to type out with his eyes. “They said Moloch wasn’t a permanent island resident until Joe arrived. So Lamashtu must have stolen the source of this Life Spring and implanted it here. It brought prosperity to the island and allowed Moloch to merge with a portion of it.”
{Makes sense to me.} Gracie paused. {Oh, and another big difference between a demon and a god is that you can’t kill a god. The only way to defeat one is to kill the thing it is bound to.}
“The island?” Jace asked.
{Or find this Life Source thing and remove it from whatever socket, altar, or enchantment that allows Moloch to bond with it.}
Jace nodded and started looking around at the drastically changing scenery. The path had been getting rougher over the past few minutes, and now that they had reached the edge of the trees, the ground was covered with ancient lava flows. Without really knowing how it worked in real life, Jace guessed it took a thousand years for magma to break down enough to turn into fertile soil. In a game environment like this, he assumed it happened much quicker. Still, it would be a long time before the harsh, glassy rocks that crunched under their feet ever sprouted a fruit tree.
The sun beat down on the prisoners, adding another heat element to the suddenly hostile environment, and with the smoke rising steadily before them, it only looked to get hotter.
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When they finally reached the volcano’s mouth, it looked about what Jace would have expected if he had asked AI software to illustrate a pit of lava into which one could throw a human sacrifice. The crater's rim before them was uneven, rising high on the back and sides but dropping low on the front, creating a level plateau with access to the bubbling lava below. Jace couldn’t see the magma but could feel it even with his environmental senses dialed down. Snowy whimpered and stayed back from the heat as far as she could. Esther, Leah, and Rock were just as timid. Only Draya showed no concern for the lava.
But she wasn’t without fear. Pharah and Djona broke away from the group and had two other troglodytes drag the young mage behind them. Twenty feet from the lip of the volcano stood Moloch. He had emerged from the stone with a bubbling, hissing entrance. The rock cooled slightly as it rose from the ground, but only enough to solidify. It still burned the eyes to look at him, heat waves warping the air. And while his outer layers “skinned” over, his hollow, cavernous chest never did. The god’s innards churned and roiled like a concrete mixer, only filled with bright orange lava.
The figure stood twelve feet tall when he had stopped growing, and his stomach was large enough to hold an orc. The arms hung unnaturally low, the giant hands open on either side of his knees three feet off the ground. Jace could see how the deity could grasp any person or animal, curl his arms at the elbows, and drop them into the burning furnace in his abdomen.
Draya quaked before this monstrosity, and Jace could see Esther having second thoughts about their plan. Yes, she felt confident Draya could survive the fire, but what if this abomination decided to crush the young woman first? Jace doubted it. A sick being like Moloch would want to hear the screams from the sacrifices in his belly.
Any plan to rush the lava god before the ceremony was put on hold when they heard a screech from the sky and looked up. Lamashtu circled ahead, at least, Jace assumed the wretched chimera flying above them was the demon in question. She had the head of a lion, mouth open, and tongue constantly hanging out over her sharp teeth. Her body was that of a mostly naked female, but she was far from attractive. Her distended belly implied she was nine months pregnant, symbolically letting others know she was moments away from producing offspring. Yet, Jace knew any child she presented would be a kidnapped victim, not something she could produce with her own body. Instead of the vibrant, life-giving aura most pregnant women gave off, her stomach was bruised and veiny, as if the child was stillborn and rotting inside her. Two infant skulls served as a bra to cover her bloated breasts, and a small loincloth hung from her waist. Her legs had clawed feet like a bird of prey, and her wings spread four feet wide on either side of her as she alighted gently on the volcano’s rim to watch the proceedings.
The demoness appeared unarmed, but Jace was willing to bet she had an arsenal of magic inside her and guessed she would gladly Stun her foes, pick them up with her claws, and then drop them in the churning lava behind her.
As the troglodytes assembled before their god, preparing for the sacrifice, Jace questioned his operator. “What is with Lamashtu and Moloch? Why are a god and demon working together?”
{According to mythology, Lamashtu steals children, and Moloch takes children in his arms and burns them. Seems like any celestial dating app would match them in a heartbeat. I believe in the realms, they aren’t as picky, and they will kidnap and consume adults too.}
“But shouldn’t they be enemies?”
{You’ve got to get out of your close-minded thinking. There is no good and evil here. Yes, each demon has a god as a mortal enemy who perfectly counters his strength, and each god has a demon who can thwart his defenses, but when their motivations or skill sets align, they are very likely to work together.}
Jace listened as he watched the lizardmen arrange themselves before their masters. Pharah, foremost, stood proudly twenty feet from the giant figure of Moloch. The god’s stone face was unreadable, his eyes flaming embers that stared back at his servants. Behind the queen, Djona knelt with his head to the ground. Draya and her two escorts were a few feet further back. The troglodytes dropped to their knees, pulling on the young woman’s arms to make her do likewise, but she resisted. Most of the lizardmen, about fifty of them, gathered in a semi-circle sixty feet from Moloch. Only a few guards remained with the prisoners, keeping them at a distance outside of the ceremony.
Jace looked around and saw the lizardmen assigned to them all had their eyes focused on the proceedings before and slightly above them. Only after the half-ring of troglodytes joined Djona on their knees could the tall orc see what was happening. He glanced to the side and saw that Esther had already escaped her shackles, the shoddy iron restraints lying on the ground. She still wore the cheap tunic and pants Djona had offered them, but he knew her skills allowed her to change outfits in a heartbeat.
The orc tested the current arrangement by flexing his arms and snapping the handcuffs. Neither the sound of them breaking nor their clatter hitting the rocky ground drew the guards' attention. The troglodytes kept their attention forward. Psycho and Rock followed the shaman’s lead. Leah needed to cast a spell, and Jace watched as the iron rusted and disintegrated around her wrists. The group stepped backward several feet until they were completely behind their distracted escorts. Jace began casting his totems strategically around the volcano while the rest of his group entered their inventories to arm themselves. Up by the volcano’s edge, it looked like things were beginning to happen.