CHAPTER 562: ARMED AND READY

You’ve returned, whispered ‘The Watcher’ in Mason’s mind. I knew you would. You could still join us, immortal. My master can still give you everything your heart desires.

“Wrong organ,” Mason muttered as he pushed his goblin cart. “My dick’s in charge.”

The greater demon had no response to that. But actually he was suddenly glad the demons had never tried seducing him in the name of evil.

They were back in the main cavern now, heading down the ramp towards the engineers. Phuong and his small team were playing cards at a table under the ‘Heart’ platform. Lodie’s brothers and cousins were nearby working on steel squares and beams.

The goblin girl zipped past all the players on her scooter, athletic little body on full display in her tight leather. The distraction was a good reminder that Mason wasn’t entirely joking with his throw-away demon line.

“Bring parts, please!” Lodie called without looking back. Becky moved up beside him and glared.

“She in charge now, too?”

He rolled his eyes and pushed his cart. Pretty soon the goblins were all scampering between the new parts and old, using their series of strange tools to start putting the steel into a kind of…siege tower looking…thing.

“Any problems?” Mason said as Phuong stepped up with a nod.

“No. Well, sort of. The engineers searched the town and said the ‘mechanists’ are gone. Whatever the difference is. We couldn’t find them anywhere. Other than that, no problems. Unless these whiners belly-aching about not spending the night in the goblin city counts.”

“I have a broken fecking ankle,” Seamus muttered, getting a pat on the back from Alex.

“I just wanted the bed,” Carl said, looking around. “It’s more comfortable. And my back hurts.”

“After those servant girls, I bet it does,” Garet said, to a round of laughter. He looked at Mason and opened his mouth like he was about to joke about something else. But as they locked eyes, the ‘tactician’ just cleared his throat.

Mason went to Lodie and asked about the mechanists.

“Do we need them? To deal with the Heart?”

“Need?” The princess shrugged. “No, no. But less chance of death to all? Yes. Much less.”

Mason sighed, yet again having made the mistake of asking a goblin a question. He left the others to guard the engineers, deciding to give the cavern and surrounding area a check just in case. Phuong said he’d looked a little, but another pass never hurt. Even if they couldn’t find the ‘mechanists’, they might find demons waiting to ambush them.

He also took the opportunity to experiment with his boots, running to top speed before dropping his weight and jumping. His first attempt went so high he dropped his boot meter again out of animal panic. The ground shook as he hit the stone, the force vibrating painfully up his legs.

At some point he realized he could probably jump the goblins up one by one to the Heart, and maybe even carry their machine. But that seemed like it would take the kind of skill he definitely didn’t have. Boot-jumping was going to take some practice.

He made several more attempts, finding if he timed things right, he could basically reach the top of the cavern a couple hundred feet above. It was hard to comprehend. When he was a boy he’d often dreamt of flying, his adopted mother calling him for lunch as he zipped around the estate, soaring with the birds. Now it was almost reality.

Air whipped past him as he built the nerve to cross the lava pool. In a single jump he could easily go from one side of the cavern to the other, with plenty of room to spare.

He made a ‘woah’ kind of panic sound as he overshot, sliding his boot-weight to drop like a rock, just before he slammed into a wall.

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered, grinning like an idiot. He looked back to where he’d jumped and shook his head. It was a good 300 feet. Maybe more.

But he reminded himself why he was there and kept circling, checking the open tunnels leading into other places in the giant mountain complex. He used One with Nature to ask a few animals about groups of goblins nearby. None had seen anything. Until a rat spoke up over a mouthful of food about ‘lots of tasty dead ones’.

Mason followed the creature’s guidance, and soon found a tunnel full of dead goblin engineers. They’d been mangled and half eaten. Many of their body parts had been replaced by mechanical prosthetics—fake arms or legs or eyes. He expected these were the ‘mechanists’, but picked one up to take it back.

Lodie quickly confirmed it. She and the others looked sad, then gathered to whisper and argue.

“Can still do,” Lodie announced a little while later. “I mean, we can still...whatever. Gizmatic. No problem.”

Goblin confidence was never inspiring. Also, creatures that could be both cowardly and insanely risk-tolerant made no sense. But he supposed he just didn’t understand how they thought or saw the world. He did his best to look pleased.

The engineers finally put their machine together, getting Mason and his players to help lift up beams and platforms. The damn thing had actual hydraulics, and was pretty sturdy looking, with a wide base that could stretch out with long stabilizing ‘feet’.

The demon’s metal contraption started spinning again as they approached, just to make things difficult. They got their ‘special doodad’ loaded, and pushed their ‘siege tower’ close. But there was a gap between the top and the platform, and they couldn’t cross it without getting smashed by the whirling thing.

“I could attach something to the roof,” Mason suggested, huddled next to a small crowd of terrified but also exhilarating looking engineers in the tower. “I can climb up. Hammer in some spikes, attach ropes. We could swing the thing.”

The goblins conferred. Lodie pushed up next to him and smiled with that ‘speaking to a toddler face’ she had.

“This could work, lord. But…the doodad might explode.”

Mason sighed and crawled up, then jumped straight to the platform. The demon got in his ear again, but he ignored it as he proceeded to climb around the sides of the platform, smashing belts and joints until the damn thing stopped moving.

You’re going to fail, the demon in the machine intoned bitterly in his mind. This world is doomed, sooner or later. It’s only a matter of time.

“Maybe,” he said. “But it’s got more time than you.”

He helped the goblins set down their ramp and move their ‘doodad’ perilously across. Then he helped them get to the platform, lifting Lodie and setting her beside him. She gave him one of those hungry looks again, and he locked that little tidbit away in the ever-present, Cerebus-inspired horny animal in his mind.

Likes to be lifted/manhandled. Check.

The goblins took turns weeping or staring at the ‘Heart’ in distress, then got down to business. They hooked up their battering-ram like device, which connected to a bunch of unplugged pipes and holes in the front of the machine.

It was somewhere between steam-punk and a Turing machine, but at least it looked like the goblins knew what they were about.

One last chance, said the demon as if tired. Help us, and I offer you a world of your own. Does it matter what you think of my kind? Do you think your patron cares about you? This ‘creator’? We are the only ones who offer hope.

Mason was about to tell the creature to just shut up already when system text flared.

[Objective Decision: Option 1. Join the Gods of Destruction. Receive choice of custom world upon the destruction of the ‘prime’. Option 2. Protect the prime from the Doom event. Receive Divine Title and Lineage rewards.]

Mason felt his jaw clench, reminded he didn’t have to ‘believe’ the creature in a world where the system created agreements. There it was in black and white. Destroy the artificially created world of ‘the great game’ he’d long despised. Or try to save it from itself.

He shook his head and scoffed, struggling to believe his own reality. He tried to at least consider it, rather than reject it out of hand. A few months ago he’d have leapt at the offer. Hell, he might have done it for free.

But he was a different man now. A different version of himself who’d changed the way he considered his existence. And he knew the answer.

He hated the alien that had done all this to man. But there was a difference between creator and creation. Maybe it made him a fool, a willing pawn, but he couldn’t feel otherwise.

“It’s not up to me what happens to a whole world,” he said.

There you are wrong, said the demon. You have grown powerful, immortal. It’s exactly up to you.

“You’re not listening,” Mason said, getting bored now. He activated One with Nature and sighed with pleasure, feeling the power pulse out to find life in every direction, even here under thousands of tons of rock.

He closed his eyes and imagined his forest. The trees and animals and all the life he’d found in the ‘game’, so unique and interesting no matter its designated role by some uncaring god.

He didn’t know if it was by accident or design, but ‘roboGod’ had made something beautiful. Something that deserved the chance to survive and exist, regardless of what men did or didn’t do. Mason didn’t want to rule the world. He didn’t want to decide for millions of people or for a thousand other living things.

“I’m just gonna save it,” he said, mostly to himself. “After that, it’s up to them.”

He smiled at the thought. Of sitting in his forest with his family and friends, peaceful, but watching. At all the women and children and head-aches that would likely follow.

Next to man-eating demon wars, it felt rather peaceful. And God help anything or anyone who came into those trees looking for trouble.

He clicked the objective, and watched the choice to destroy the world vanish like it never existed.

And so you’ll die screaming, hissed the demon over the noises of steam and metal clacks. The gods of destruction have marked you, Mason Nimitz. They’ll come for your precious mates, your brother, your forest. They will burn. They will all burn because of you.

“Lodie,” Mason called. The little goblin popped up with soot stained goggles. “If you’re ready, could you please end this thing now? It’s getting on my nerves.”

“Maybe lord duke should…leave mountain?” Lodie said, glancing back at the machine. “Goblins won’t go…but…we can’t…I mean, I don’t know for sure if…”

“We’re not going anywhere,” he said firmly, stepping towards the engineers. “I expect this thing is in your minds, telling you you’ll fail. All it has is lies. Do what you’re trained to do. What you know will work. I trust you. Don’t listen to it.”

Lodie and her kin stared up at him from flipped up goggles. A few glanced at each other. But shoulders squared and chests rose. The engineer’s faces turned more serious, their goggles went back into place.

Together they fused the last copper pipes and hoses over the sound of the demon’s roars. Lodie and one of her brothers worked the control panel, flipping switches and levers and stepping back with some final religious gesture.

The ‘doodad’ growled and chunked like an old engine, making a hissing sound as it worked. Mason almost laughed as he saw the red light of the demon being pulled. The goblins literally sucked the bastard out.

All the nasty words turned to screams. Second by second, the goblin machine (with a few panicked modifications from the engineers) pulled apart a greater demon of hell, and trapped him in their weird device. They were like little green fucking Ghostbusters.

[Infernal Herald and Greater Demon: ‘The Watcher’ defeated. House Title gained: Infernal Eye-Gougers. Increased resistance to all infernal scrying and mind powers.]

[Razor Mountain: Infernal Infestation raid: complete. Options: Marilith, Papa Bones, Pit Guardian, and Brood Mother: destroyed. The Watcher: captured. Goblins: alliance formed. Heart of the Mountain: preserved. Calculating individual and team rewards.]

[Raid rewards: Experience gained (major). Raid item reward: maximum reward initiated.]

[You have earned enough experience for level 24. All statistics improved.]

[Raid Item Reward. Marilith Honor Blades. Innate. Rewarded by the demon, after death on the prime, to an exceptional combatant. Mediocre, if judged by the standard of magic blades. But then they do come with extra arms.]

Mason smiled as the text rolled. He didn’t have a damn clue what those blades would be like, but every advantage in his fight with Jeong was more than welcome. And he imagined his players got a big boost, too.

The goblin machine stopped, and the engineers cringed but inspected their Heart, soon looking at Lodie with big smiles before they all started whooping and hugging. Mason laughed when Lodie ran into his arms, lifting her up as she kicked her feet and kissed his cheek with a dirty face.

When the celebrating whined down, he went back to his players at the bottom, and told them they would all live, after all. The mood was pretty good after the rewards.

“Well that’s a relief,” Carl said wryly. Then he met Mason’s eyes and blinked. “Wait, we could have all just died? Did everyone know that?”

Mason slapped him on the back, then put an arm around Demi and Becky with a grin.

“Get anything good? Also we’re staying for another day. Probably longer. First for however long it takes Haley to get what I asked for. And then…well, consider this mountain our base of operations. We’re bringing civilians, mostly scouts and elves. We’ll find Chinua and his people. Then we deal with Jeong. Phuong and Carl are in charge if I Feywalk out. Any questions?”

“Um, yeah.” John cleared his throat. “If we’re staying, can we bring our, uh, female friends, too?”

The other men looked at him like this was a great question. Mason rolled his eyes.

“We’re at fucking war.” He looked between them and shook his head. “We’re not bringing your girlfriends. You’ve all got goblin girls anyway. Jesus. Phuong?”

The older man winced like he agreed with the men, and Mason put a hand to his face.

“If it is a forward base of operations, Patron…and, if the teleporter can handle it…it’s not uncommon for soldiers to have, well…”

“Christ. OK bring half of Nassau for all I care. Give me the names and I’ll add it to Haley’s list. I think she can see the text from anywhere.”

The men all beamed and whispered amongst themselves. Mason shook his head and walked off with Becky and Demi.

“I’m not waiting around,” he said. “I’ll start exploring through the fey. I can bring you for sure, Demi, but Becky I’m not sure if it’s worth…”

“I don’t mind stayin’,” she said, which surprised him. “That fey place creeps me out. And I guess it wouldn’t hurt to get to know Lodie a little.” She crossed her arms. “Since I gotta meet Lila, or whoever the hell, when we get back.”

He smiled and let out a breath, then used his superhuman speed to dart in for a kiss before Becky could smack him in the face. Then he took Demi and walked her towards the side of the cave.

“Ready to go?”

She scoffed like he was crazy.

“What? We’re going now? I mean don’t we…shouldn’t we at least…I dunno. Change, or something?”

He winked. “You’ll learn I’m not the type to wait around. Things need doing. But if you wanna stay here, it’s fine, I shouldn’t be more than…”

“Where you go, I go,” she said firmly. He couldn’t help but smile as he thought about their new ‘divine titles’. He squeezed her hand and walked straight at the rock of the mountain wall. He could almost see beyond it now, straight into the fey. But he doubted Demi could.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s weird, but, there’s open paths everywhere here. Just walk.”

“I trust you,” Demi said, no tone or joke or special meaning. Just a straight statement of fact. Mason felt a warmth in it, and from the scent and sight of her. She was starting to feel like Haley—like another person who was with him to the end, who understood. Someone to help carry the weight.

It made him realize he hadn’t thought of Blake in days. But even that thought disturbed him less than it once had. He smiled at his lover and walked through the stone, straight into another plane of existence with hardly any effort at all.

He’d come a long way, and the demon was right: he’d chosen his path. It was time to deal with Jeong, unite what was left of humanity, and finish what roboGod started.

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