I had planned for this, worst-case, but it’s still humiliating to watch me run for my life and launch myself off that roof. Eight angry gargoyles came to life to do my fighting for me, as the first bolt of blue lightning lashed out of the spire and shot Baalphezar in the back.

I levitated most of the way down from the tower before my spell gave out, overwhelmed by the fear that had wiped all my fancy plans away. I told Veazey and Denise I was ready to fight Baalphezar hand to hand, but when I actually saw him up close, when I thought about that enraged giant coming at me with nothing between us, the magic left my body all at once, leaving me cold and empty at the base of the tower.

I tried to calm myself enough to bring in magic and it just got worse. I had one crazy idea in the back of my head, just a stray thought, really, but suddenly, crazy plans were the only plans I had left.

I took off running and yelled at Jeeves, “Fortitude! Wards!” and nothing happened. “Jeeves, emergency macros one and two! Fortitude and wards from the French section of Taltorak!”

“Intrusion attempt detected,” Jeeves said. “Script error, script error, script error. The 2020 Dodge Charger is a four-door.”

The crying face of a 2-D anime girl filled my HUD for a moment and vanished.

“Jeeves? Jeeves! Jeeves, pull up Taltorak emergency cheat sheet! Admin override!”

Jeeves slurred, “Harrrrr-iiiii-ssss-on Temmmm-ple” and all my windows vanished.

* * *

I was in total panic now, trying to run and troubleshoot at the same time, shouting at a system that wasn’t responding to verbal commands at all. I tried to yell for Evan and Veazey, but my system didn’t even know how to be a phone anymore.

Then my display flickered, and a female voice said, “Hey man, your butler crashed. I had to reboot him.”

“Who is this? What the fuck? Oh my god, you’re still installed. You’ve got to get Jeeves back. I can’t go into battle with a goddamn pornbot!”

“Hey!” the bot said, indignant. “I was with the troops when 7th Cav hit Dongala! Half the boys on the ground installed me. I been on Marine desktops, motherfucker! Just share your HUD and tell me what you got.”

“Fine. Next demon we see, you can pull up a video and show me how to fuck it.”

The bot ignored the insult. “You’re running a next-gen bot brain in combat mode, are you playing a war sim in the Zone?”

“I am a wizard about to be in hand-to-hand combat with a demon prince and that butler had all my spells. Maybe you can kludge this, you see a folder called TALTORAK?”

“Can’t open it without the butler. You’ve got that one locked down for real. But I’ve got a military satellite coming over in twenty seconds. I can reroute comms and get you eyes in realtime.”

“How does a glorified porn script know how to hack satellite traffic?”

The bot didn’t answer, she just did it. My display flickered and a realtime map popped up in the lower left corner.

“Okay, I can see you,” she said. “Board looks clear. Where’s the target?”

“Look for gargoyles on the roof of Madison Tower.”

“Meh,” she said. “He ain’t so big. Like choppin’ a tree down.” A live image of Baalphezar appeared in the corner of my screen, still fighting gargoyles, trapped in some kind of glowing blue net. Lightning was still coming out of the spire, blasting him every few seconds.

“He’s still at the tower. Oh, thank god, he’s still at the tower.” Denise didn’t know it, but her gargoyle trick was keeping me alive. Hopefully, I would live long enough to thank her.

* * *

Three shark dogs overtook me while I was running away. I could smell them, but I just kept running. I tried to feel my wards, but they were dead. Even if I could channel magic, It would take a couple minutes to recast them, and I did not have a couple minutes.

The first one hit my right leg and bent it sideways, putting me in agony as the tendon strained. The second one jumped on my back and knocked me down, pinning me to the ground with its weight. I should have turned around when I smelled them, I should have tried to get some shots off before they jumped me.

But I still had the gun in my hand. Could I shoot this thing without blowing my own head off? Better go for the easy one first. I wriggled my arm free and shot the one on my back at point-blank range. The top half of its body exploded, then its hind legs wobbled and disappeared.

There was another one coming in fast from the left, and I was still on the ground. I put my arm behind my head like a trick shooter at the county fair. I couldn’t see what I was shooting at while I was kissing the concrete, but my HUD could still show me where the gun was pointing, and still painted a little red dot where the bullet would go.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

I was able to destroy the second one while the third was coming around to charge me from the other side. I pulled myself up and shot at it three times, but it was panic fire that barely scratched it. The dog hit me in the chest and knocked me back, straining the tendon again until I gave an involuntary shout of pain.

The impact knocked the gun out of my hand and this thing was almost on top of me. Well, if it was good enough for Belak… I gave a mental tug and Cecilia’s knife appeared in my hand, just in time for me to drive it into the demon’s head. It was still scratching and biting as I struggled under it, so I kept stabbing; frantic, terrified, and pissed, until it disappeared.

I was flat on my back, writhing in pain, when I heard the bot’s voice. “Easy, man. You’re okay. You’re not dead, and you’re not alone. You took some hits, but nothing’s broken. They strained your Achilles, and you took one hard to the shoulder, but it’s not dislocated. You got meds?”

“I can heal it from memory once I focus, but I gotta calm down.”

“Where are you heading?”

“The Wampanoag Rift.”

“What’s at the Wampanoag Rift?”

“I am scared shitless and all out of magic, but if I make it there, I think I can recharge.”

The bot drew a navigation line on the ground for me. “It’s about a mile from the tower and you’re halfway there.”

“You’re telling me I’ve got to limp half a mile on a fucked up leg before these things come at me again?”

“I’ve got eyes on this whole area now that the fog cleared up. I can warn you as soon as anything comes through that portal. Keep walkin’. You can do this. And next time you have a boss fight, you should bring a couple trauma packs, in case your magic craps out again.”

“That would have been great advice about six hours ago. Where were you then?”

“That’s why you should have kept me installed, dipshit. I could have fixed your butler, if you weren’t such a prude.”

“Did you just call me dipshit? James Veazey is the only person on Earth who calls me dipshit, are you his copy?”

“I’m a new process based on her, and I’ve got her looped in. You should have let him shoot it, by the way. Veazey is deadly with a Win Mag. He could have put ten bullets in that thing before it got to you.”

“He would only get two before Baalphezar firmed his wards up. I guess we could get lucky and take him out with a head shot, but I am not gonna let my best friend throw his life away on a dice roll.”

I was limping across Marlborough when the bot said, “Incoming! Three dogs through the portal. Gun up, I’ll paint them for you.” And my HUD turned into a video game. Three red dots on a mini map, with demon silhouettes outlined in red.

I hesitated before putting two bullets in the leader, relieved to watch it discorporate as I braced myself and did the same to the second. The third one got so close, I shot him at point-blank range and got covered in gray goo.

“Hey, asshole!” the bot yelled at me. “These things are too fast for you to second guess me! When I paint a target, you shoot it! Pop it twice and snap to the next one! If you keep overthinking this, you are gonna think yourself dead!”

The demon pack was dead, but the attacks had left me dazed and bleeding. I tried to stand, and my right leg buckled, driving me to my knees. Something about the kneeling position, recognition of my sudden frailty, broke me down.

“Oh God, don’t let me die out here. I thought I wanted to die when I started this, but I don’t. Please God, I don’t want to die anymore.”

“Then stand the fuck up!” Not God, but the bot’s voice, loud and sarcastic in my ear. “Oh, you lost your magic powers, boo fucking hoo! None of my boys had magic when they got surrounded in that fucking jungle. All they had were guns and bullets, but they kept fighting and so can you. Magic or no magic, if you can move and you can shoot, you are still in this fight. Just stand up and keep moving! Keep crying if you have to, but fucking walk! Trust me, a man can fight and cry at the same time. I’ve seen it a lot.”

I rose to my feet and resumed limping toward the rift.

Baalphezar was still fighting gargoyles, straining the defenses built into Madison’s Tower. I hoped the old ghost was enjoying the show.

“He’s still surrounded by statues,” the bot said. “Four down, four to go. You gotta pick up the pace, buddy! One foot in front of the other, let’s go!”

I was rapidly losing confidence in this plan, but I kept going.

The bot was still trying to help. “You got intel on this purple prick? Here it is. Baalphe-whatever. Okay, you did your homework, but these anatomy charts look like DaVinci drawings. You want me to clean these up for you?”

“Uh… sure.”

My HUD flickered again, and suddenly the live image was overlaid with animations of Baalphezar’s muscles and organs, moving in sync as he fought. A long red bar appeared at the bottom of my screen. The number in the middle said sixty-five percent.

I realized what it was and laughed explosively. “You gave him a health bar?” It was the best laugh I’d had in weeks. I laughed until I cried and felt the magic surge in like a kiss from the Earth. I healed myself and put my wards up like it was the easiest thing in the world.

“Okay, I got comms, and your butler is almost back,” the bot said. “Good luck, dude! Here are your boys!”

* * *

And suddenly I had Veazey back in my ear, shouting my name.

“I’m here! Had to reroute comms but I’m here. Whole system crashed, but Jeeves just rebooted. I’m not a hundred percent, but I can move, I can shoot, and I can cast. I’m headed for the rift. Evan, are you still on this line?”

Evan said, “Yes, Mister Kovak.”

“I need you to do some math for me. Jeeves! What’s the biggest magic stunt Stefan Kovach ever did? Give me something I can quantify, anything involving a physical object.”

“Stefan Kovach capsized the USS Oklahoma on June 5th, 1942.”

“How much did the Oklahoma weigh?”

“The battleship USS Oklahoma weighed 11,000 tons.”

“Evan, did you hear that? What kind of KMP score would it take to lift 11,000 tons?”

“Mister Kovak, that is… More than 3000, off the scale.”

“And how much magic comes out of a single eruption of that rift?”

It took him a second to look it up. “Biggest recorded eruption was two-thousand three-hundred… Oh, no. Mister Kovak, please don’t. Is this what you’ve been planning since you jumped?”

“Just do the math!” I shouted at him. “If a Kovach mage was strong enough to lift a battleship, then he could, theoretically, be able to absorb all the magic from that rift?”

“Mister Kovak… Timothy, please. These numbers, these are guesses. Very bad guesses, made in haste. You cannot bet your life on these.”

“Jeeves, give me a countdown timer to the next eruption of the Wampanoag Rift!”

Jeeves started the countdown, and I cursed when I saw it. Ten minutes?” I wailed. “I have to stay alive for ten fucking minutes?”

I cast fortitude and broke into a full run, briefly appreciating how good it felt to walk again.

* * *

“Hey Veazey,” I shouted, still running. “I think that stupid pornbot saved my life!”

“Well yeah,” he said. “Why do you think I gave her to you? Started as a game caddie and ended up helping me with all kinds of shit. What, did you think I was fuckin’ it?”

“I didn’t think you were just fuckin’ it…”