Devil's Waltz Page 10

  He frowned, looking down, then back up to her. “I… Wouldn’t you protect my shop?”

  “Only if I have to, but ya need to know that it’s the way of nature for strong survive and the weak perish. I’m not gonna be taking care of an enormous underclass of useless monkeys. No, sir, I am not!” She twirled her wand between her fingers. “Ya should be more thankful I’m training and teaching ya now.”

  His lips almost wobbled, but he wisely composed himself. “Fine,” he said darkly. “I’ll train… but I’m going to be a Mage instead—”

  “Nope. We have enough Mages, and you’re not that good with Death Bolts either.” She gave him a full smile.

  His eyes narrowed very, very menacingly. Quite a cute look for his more-chiseled pale Dark Human face. The red irises were quite nice too. If only he were taller. Sad.

  Then his eyes flicked toward a few of the teenage girls to the right but only for a third of a second.

  Hehehe. I know what that means.

  Gabrielle leaned in close. His jaw tightened, and she whispered cheerily at his ear, “Be a good boy… and I’ll look away if ya have to take one, just one, of the girls as your sex slave. Did ya know I’m actually Rowan’s sex slave?” The light players were gonna hate the upcoming dark continent for sure!

  Now that won him over! His eyes widened to the size of peaches. “Fine! I’ll be a freaking Archer and risk my life adventuring.” He snatched up his bow and quiver. “But once I’m powerful, I’m becoming a Cook and there’s nothing you’ll be able to do about it!”

  At last he saw some sense. “That’s more like it.” Her wand flushed bright green, and with a slow wave, she healed his cheeks. “Goody boy!” She ruffled his hair. “Back to training. The lot of ya.”

  They murmured a chorus of, "Yes, Lady LeMort." They scrambled back to their training stations. The better ones paired off with each other, leaving the worst for the worst. It was a natural thing to do.

  At the rate they were going, they’d climb to level 180 by the time they reached adulthood, which wasn’t long in Aeon Chronicles. Depending on their diets, that’d take anywhere from a week to a decade. Magic food was useful in that regard.

  Whistling a merry tune, Gabrielle retreated back to her giant umbrella. The sun was sure bright today despite the corrupted indigo sky rife with sparkling dark mana.

  Someone sighed. Ambiguous. “You didn’t have to keep slapping them.”

  What did she know about raising a kid? “Yup, I do. It builds character.”

  She scoffed. “Characters who hates you?”

  “Yup.” Twirling once, Gabrielle spread her arms wide. “All that molten hate will be struck over and over till it’s forged into sturdy strength!”

  “Wow…” She shook her head, chuckling. “Why does that even make sense?”

  “Cus it does,” Gabrielle quipped smugly. She knew first-hand.

  “And I assume you’re not going to tell me where you got this idea from.” Ambiguous palmed her hip.

  “Nope.” Of course, Gabrielle wouldn’t reveal her sources. That was tippy-top-secret information locked in a ten-layered vault in her superior brain.

  “Well, alright. I hope you know what you’re—” A birdie made of bone and mist hurtled in front of Ambiguous’ eyes. “What the heck is this?” She grabbed it, then recoiled at the touch. “Shit, that’s cold.” Frostbit, her fingers were dark-purple and blotchy with rips and gashes.

  Gabrielle examined and attempted to crack its skill-list.

  Skeletal Pigeon (Crafted Undead): Level 146

  Health: 1570

  Mana: 17500

  Stamina: 950

  Skills: Winged Flight (T7)

  Huh. So Rowan figured out how to give his crafted minions a flight skill. Not bad, boy, not bad. Or he lucked out again. Probably the latter. “It’s Rowan’s! He sent me a gift. Could be a lot better though… I’m waiting for a dragon.” She looked toward her flowery chatbox and typed him a message. The letters appeared one after another like dominoes falling.

  Gabby LeMort: Thank you for the birdie! Dragon next, please!

  Rowan Black: You asked just in time.

  Wow! Already done?

  She was about to snatch her Onyx Broom from her pouch when a colossal ghostly dragon made of only ice and mist burst into the sky over the town and circled the spire thrice with amazing agility. It wasn’t like any other dragon in the game—it was far, far better. It was sleek and long with an extended barbed tailed and curved spikes running down its spine. Its fearsome jaws of blackish ice parted. A bullet-spray of icy bolts slipped through the shield. The fleet’s cannon-fire halted, and the zeppelin backed away.

  “Yeeees! He did it!” Gabrielle jumped in sticky joy as the Dark Humans cheered.

  Capping a health flask, Ambiguous whistled. “Didn’t think he could.”

  “Wha? Of course he did. My grouchy Rowan wouldn’t let me down.” Though he was too big of a dummy at times, he was somewhat dependable at least. That much was true. With some minuscule chance, her weak straying heart might be right; he could be worth keeping around after the mission concluded, she dared to consider.

  Chapter 9

  For Redemption 2

  Another day, another series of failed interviews.

  Sliding open a polymer, metal-like door, Jonathan Lee tisked and shook his head. Expecting the worst, he inhaled deep breaths and entered his coffin apartment. It was worse. The afternoon summer sun bored through the ceiling-height window, bypassed thin curtains, and heated the space into a human oven. He was immediately sweating under his blazer and uncomfortably-tight button-up shirt. The suit was one of the few belonging to his dad, the man who’d suggested finding a room at Galveston City for a minimum wage job. There were still some low-skill, repetitive jobs here for a highschool graduate with terrible grades and a disappointing athletic record, but even they were swiftly vanishing in the wake of Automaton Corporation’s continued unstoppable growth. The recent advancements in artificial intelligence had put their business on another level.

  Jonathan helped himself to a two-minute cool shower to save on utility bills, then roughly toweled himself off. He checked his Holo Phone, a gift from his grandmother. No way could he save up for one of these on UBI. He didn’t bother reading the job application declines stacked in the message inbox twined with a single email from Synaptic Entertainment, probably an explanation about the downtime. Aeon Chronicles. That darned world. It had been a dream-come-true when he’d discovered there was a credit marketplace linking the two worlds, but his ventures across Aeon turned out disappointing too. Every raid’s loot had been split a hundred ways at minimum, and Jonathan’s small-party adventures were laughably bad. Those tedious crafting professions weren’t helping either.

  That wasn’t even mentioning this latest mishap with the Red Dragons.

  Except it had not been entirely a mishap; something had changed in Jonathan during the grueling day of watching that terrible memory. Maybe a positive change.

  After the second hour, anguish and guilt had boiled into disgust. At the fourth hour, he had been pure rage. And at the sixth hour, rage had simmered into mild disturbance, eventually coalesced into a puddle of meek annoyance when he’d watched the memory for the millionth time. He’d started watching sitcoms when he shouldn’t have. There was nothing else he could do in such a drastically boring hell, for the gods had blocked communication with his guildmates and friends. He’d grown almost… indifferent to watching Max’s murder, indifferent to it, period.

  But it was still his fault. Jonathan repeated the truth to himself once more: Rowan had plenty of paper towels on his station and had that knife in hand so suspiciously, gripped it with creepy zeal. I saw it all, no one else, and I didn’t do a thing. Nothing would ever change that no matter how he felt. The fact was unchangeable—and that was why he was going to bear the game’s judgment and not run away like a chicken-boy. He was a chicken no more. The wheel of karma was turning, and Jonathan’s hour
of redemption was at hand. Soon, he was to be reborn from the depths of Hell. One day? Two? He’d spend an in-game year re-watching that murder because that was what the gods demanded of him. Repentance.

  The pod, the gel-lined magical gateway into Aeon, was waiting next to his bed. Jonathan was too eager to jump through and let magic consume him a poke of the control panel.

  Patch notes greeted him while he was phasing through the portal to Aeon. Nothing too significant presented itself while he read the first page with hasty eyes. The sentences filtered through his skull like cheese through a grater, hardly registering. He swiped onward, reading every other sentence. No problem, for the notes were a hogwash of mundane changes for the Paladin class and his many professions, and he hadn’t any time for twaddle when there was a classroom in Hell with his name on the whiteboard. The pages were dismissed in an instant. Away the bundle flew, Jonathan letting the portal take him.

  Once more, he sat in biology class.

  “What the fu—”

  Once more, Max’s cry for aid was cut off by that knife. What was it called? A scalpel! The knowledge was in his head today. Strange. He swore he had failed biology along with chemistry and calculus. He was growing smarter. The gods were reforging his mind anew.

  “Ha. Ha. Ha.” Rowan cackled in his madness.

  Most suddenly, golden light highlighted the scalpel.

  Jonathan’s nose crimpled. Why are the gods highlighting the scalpel for me?

  It was a sign—a message from the gods intended for Jonathan and no one else. But the other-worldly instrument was just a scalpel, a six-inch scalpel used by surgeons throughout the world, sharpened for a pristinely clean-cut, excellent for slicing through those tricky frog bones with almost no force applied. It was a dangerous thing for a classroom full of inexperienced students to have, one per teen. Why hadn’t Mrs. Bentley ordered smaller, duller blades instead?

  Frowning, Jonathan waited for the memory to loop while the class descended into turmoil, expecting LeMort to notice and say, “Huh.” An evil girl she was.

  She did, but the memory slowed as before, freezing. Sharper in focus as if the gods enhanced the memory, LeMort’s face was highlighted and clearer than before. He could see the finest contours of her skin and count the individual lashes framing those hideously oversized eyes only a darkie could have. A physical deformity, it was a mark of her born madness. There was no fear, no panic. Those ecstatic eyes and flared nostrils did not match her lips parted in which he had assumed was surprise.

  Wait… she isn’t surprised? Is this what the gods are telling me?

  Jonathan’s fists balled, anger building in his stomach. “Did you also see Rowan approach with that scalpel? Why didn’t you say anything?!” He tore his gaze from the darkie. “Arrgh. Of course, you wouldn’t say anything! You’re mad!” He couldn’t stop from twisting back to her crazed face. “Did Max also bully you during your TWO DAYS here?!” She’d transferred to Westwind from a snobby private school, then transferred right out after this. “So you let Rowan kill him?!”

  She wouldn’t answer. Of course, she wouldn’t. She was LeMort the menace girl! Jonathan reached out to mangle the answer from her, but his hand passed through her jaw. Untouchable, she was nothing more than a memory.

  “How could you?” Jonathan shook his head in disgust. “You should be in jail along with me. It’s all our fault!” He sniffed. “But I guess you’re loving it now, aren’t you!” He pointed back at Rowan with a shaky finger. “You’ve made this lunatic into a Necromancer! Do you know what this means?! He can’t die because he is an ADVENTURER! You’ve unleashed hell on Aeon! Was it all worth it?! Answer me!”

  The classroom unpaused, and the memory blurred. It looped.

  Jonathan bellowed a snarl. This time, his eyes snapped to LeMort from the beginning. He couldn’t see her face from behind, hidden by that mess of putrid blonde hair. He was glued to the spot behind his station; obviously, the memory did not include anything he hadn’t seen from his vantage point. Luckily, his station was positioned in an angle which allowed him a view of both Rowan and LeMort. Max too. And there it was, the stack of three unused paper towels laying by Rowan’s frog parts. “Like hell you needed more paper towel!”

  And there it also was, the scalpel held suspiciously at Rowan’s side, pressed up against his leg in a vain attempt to hide it. He stopped behind Max, turned with an unmissable tiny smirk, and made his move with such proficiency only a martial-arts master could pull off. He moved with such speed, ferocity, and accuracy that Jonathan still couldn’t believe that was Rowan, the clumsy kid who had been always picked last in gym. It was as though his brain injury gave him super powers. Jonathan had heard of such things happening; he saw on a documentary of this kid waking up from coma knowing fluent French.

  “Ha. Ha. Ha,” Rowan’s mouth was cackling with spit flying everywhere.

  “Stop laughing!” Jonathan roared.

  The memory slowed to a pause again, and this time, Rowan’s face was highlighted. It didn’t need to be sharpened; those monstrous features were already clear in perfect focus, but the light drew Jonathan’s gaze up from Rowan’s mouth to the eyes. That crazy mouth! “You’re deranged!”

  The highlight narrowed to just his nose and eyes, and—

  What Jonathan saw would haunt him for years to come.

  Rowan’s upper-face was actually on the side of calm and collected, sane and lucid. Those eyes were nothing like the bulging, bloodshot eyes of a schizo having an episode like the police officials had said. Similar with LeMort, the mouth did not match the eyes. They were both acting. Both insane, both disingenuous. Darkies.

  “What in God’s name is happening here?” Jonathan whispered. A cold weight settled on his shoulders.

  Resuming, the memory played full-speed. Blood sprayed against the window and pooled around Rowan’s boot. Spit landed Max’s face. Rowan’s eyes were calm, his acting not nearly as convincing as LeMort’s. She made her quip, then the memory looped a second later, Jonathan staring in goosebump-riddled shock.

  Again, Rowan approached and turned without a squeak of his boot. Jonathan made an effort to keep focus on the eyes and not the blade or that mad smile which didn’t reach above those prominent cheekbones. This, right here, was a different type of madness—the more dangerous type. LeMort’s type. They were in on it together. There was no other explanation. Why had she and her sister volunteered to help watch over Rowan when Jonathan had been personally tasked? Why had she transfered just two days before? It couldn’t be a coincidence.

  ‘What is happening?’ Jonathan mouthed as dread seized his neck. Sinking into oblivion, he stared at a dirty spot on the floor.

  The memory looped. His pulse thudded behind his unfocused eyes. It looped again before he knew it. Then again. He kept staring at the floor. His body tingled with adrenaline. After tens of loops, he swallowed and looked at LeMort as she twisted around in her stool. “Who are you, Gabby LeMort?” Her name from the mundane world slipped through the cracks in his memory. “Who are you?” Staring into those enlarged blue eyes was like staring into the evil eyes of a devil. Those were the eyes of someone who already knew this was going to happen.

  A violent shiver waged war across Jonathan’s back and sides.

  The memory looped. He kept his gaze away from LeMort at any cost. Whatever the gods were trying to tell him wasn’t through. He had more to learn, more to grow. The guy known as Jonathan Lee was becoming more, far more than a gutless nineteen-year-old. The gods were shaping him, rebuilding him, into their champion of light in this personal hell. His own purgatory necessary to wash away his sins and be reincarnated anew, risen from the ashes, born again in the flame of the Red Dragon Matriarch. An inner-fire ignited in his heart. Righteous heat flowed through his veins and stormed up his neck into his skull. He knew who he was.

  “I. Am. Jonathan Bladestrider! Reborn in the fires of Hell!” He clawed at his scalp, back arching. “It wasn’t my fault!” Not entirely, at le
ast.

  The memory looped and looped, and he breathed with new life granted to him by the gods. His blood pumped with renewed vigor he hadn’t felt in years. He stood with a confidence he didn’t know he could stand with. His head was held so high that he swore he could lift-off into the heavens high, high above the classroom’s ceiling. The merciful gods of Aeon granted him redemption! Tears brimmed from his eyes, ran down his cheeks, and dripped onto the blue vinyl next to splashes of Max’s bright red blood. Blood which was no longer on his hands.

  The memory looped. Everything was in slow motion. Jonathan knew it in every drop of flaming blood that this was the final loop and that the gods were about to unveil a mighty truth whether he could handle it or not. A gulped slithered down his throat as every detail was clear as Elven crystal. Rowan’s uniform undulated in the cool evening draft, his fluid movement so not Rowan-like. That was not Rowan. The devil in his dark heart was in control, and Max had blackened Rowan’s heart to an oily, foul pitch. Max was to blame as much as Jonathan, if not more so. It was simple truth, and Jonathan was now a champion of justice and truth.