Chapter 493: Obligations
Mason moved deeper into the ‘Abyssal Bog’, murdering any demon who got too close or curious. The creatures underestimated his bow. A lot of quick and devious looking demons poked their heads out from cover to stare, only to get a magic arrow in the eye.
Mason’s aim and speed were getting truly terrifying. Being able to just raise the weapon and shoot without drawing made him a bit like a gunslinger from some Wild West movie. As long as the distance wasn’t too far, he could usually point and loose in a split second.
His path through the bog became a kind of evolutionary selective process for the small demons, like figuring out which animals could learn to avoid an incoming car. He splattered, skewered and nailed a good fifty to trees, chasing away the rest with a hiss.
Stag was right. He wasn’t really getting any experience. Only the occasional, tiny flicker after slaughtering a few dozen let him know he was getting anything at all.
The bog seemed abandoned by natural life. Whatever vegetation was left had drooped over or dried up, the trees turning grey and brittle, the few animal corpses left half eaten and rotting. Mason tried not to think about finding Demi the same way.
Progress was slow until he started running and ignoring demons. Then after a few hours he found his first non-demonic track. His heart beat faster as he followed, the imprints becoming clearly human then mixing into a kind of trail.
He bolted ahead, then stopped when he found the shelter. A broken lean-to lay scattered amidst a pile of blankets and home-made cups and utensils. There was a good fire site, plenty of wood stacked around a drying rack, a dead garden. It was Demi’s, Mason didn’t have a shred of doubt.
He clenched his jaw and moved to investigate, flipping over everything and searching for more tracks. Demons had been all over the place. They’d been searching, just like he was, which at least gave him a little hope. She must have seen them and run. But where?
He circled and found the battlefield. Patches of…exploded vegetation lay scattered around broken, skeletal corpses. It was impossible to tell how old they were. The demons degraded at some inhuman speed, and the vegetation was so soaked in magic you couldn’t make any kind of…
Mason blinked, and sniffed. There was something on the air. Not far. He could hear demons following him, watching, but he didn’t care if he led them straight to her. It just meant more of the bastards to kill when he did.
He sprinted after the scent, wishing suddenly he’d summoned Streak instead of the Stag, but confident he could follow. Worst case he could Shapeshift. It might scare the shit out of Demi when he got there, but as long as he found her safe nothing else mattered.
Stag followed him in silence, no longer warning him about demons or bothering to chase them off. They ran across the terrain together, avoiding the muddier patches instinctively, the ‘prime’ so much easier to walk than the fey—even here covered in abyssal energy.
The scent was faint, but it was there. Mason chased it and found the tracks. Single footsteps, humanoid, light. They ran away from the battlefield, a few more corpses nearby. And then they stopped.
They just…stopped. He searched around them furiously, looking for some sign she’d jumped or flew or…who knew what. There were no trees nearby, so she couldn’t have climbed anything, and the demonic corpses had stopped, too.
He closed his eyes and inhaled. Demi’s magic was there. The fresh, almost citric sweet, addictive smell she’d first sent him on the balcony of the Neutral Zone. The hint of something darker—something predatory and deadly just beneath the surface, like a tigress masking herself with fruit. Mason smiled as the thought hit him.
Somehow their magic gave Mason and Demi an understanding of each other that was hard to explain—a lot like his bond with Streak or any of the others. With his eyes closed and the scent of her magic close, he could almost see her, almost see what she’d been feeling and doing, like the flashes of some fuzzy dream.
He opened his eyes. She’d been thinking of him. Somehow he knew that. And the taste of her fear was clear and bitter and roiled his gut.
Damnit, Demi, where did you go?
She’d been right where he was standing. Right there exactly, deciding what to do. And then she was just…gone.
He blinked and tried to understand. Some kind of teleportation magic? If so it couldn’t have had much range or else she’d have used it to get to him. But it felt wrong. It felt like she was somehow…everywhere. On the wind.
Maybe she could float, or hover, going wherever the wind blew. It got his pulse racing again. He didn’t know exactly when she’d run, but she couldn’t have gone that far. He banished Stag to get the cooldown going. He needed Streak.
For the meantime he Shapeshifted and growled with pleasure as his form changed. The world became sharper, busier—scent hitting him from a hundred things that had seemed dull before. He wasn’t completely sure, but he had a stronger sense from one direction than any other. It would have to do.
Mason bolted after the lingering magic, literally chasing the wind, occasionally dropping to all fours.
**
Streak was a lot better scent-tracker than a shapeshifted Mason. After an hour, the increasingly giant animal appeared as a wolf on a mission, his understanding of the problem and the scent instant. He took off with a happy growl, ears down and sprinting when he found it.
Mason matched him and dropped a few demon-watchers out of principle, sending the rest scurrying away. He was excited now, too, more than worried. It seemed extremely likely Demi had escaped the event and was now hiding out somewhere else, perfectly safe.
Though he reminded himself he was already heading home with one new girl and really needed to keep things platonic. Or, you know, at least try. They’d already made out a little back in the Neutral Zone. It was pretty PG-13 and didn’t come with any strings. But still. It was more than nothing.
God forbid Mason find a few more 40 plus year old players. Preferably male. He’d even take a nerd who made bad jokes and puns. Carl could use the company.
Demi was young. And gorgeous. And the only other Nature Affinity player Mason knew about. She was also an introverted loner, just like him. She’d loved nature before all this madness, and it wasn’t hard to imagine them both living in some forest somewhere, her goal to get away from it all exactly the same as his, nothing but each other and a sleeping bag and a whole lot of stars…
Yeah. Platonic was a problem.
But Mason reminded himself he had obligations. A lot of female obligations. He had Haley, Becky, Rosa, Lexi, Naya and Ayet. And now he had Lila, though he was really hoping to keep that casual. Not to mention a whole bunch of other elven women he still had to somehow impregnate…
And he couldn’t just pick up and disappear like he’d once wanted. If he lived his life like maybe Demi preferred, even if he took the people he loved the most, he’d be leaving a whole lot of people to fend for themselves. And an angry emperor still stewing across the sea.
He knew he couldn’t, and wouldn’t. He was in this now. The baron of Nassau. The ‘demon hunter’ and ‘wolf of the west’. The leader of a house that existed to protect the western Nexus and maybe unite whatever was left of mankind.
And destroy the synthetic god who did this to us.
The last point was barely a whisper now. Mason tried to hold onto it, tried to keep the hate and helpless anger he felt. But it was fading. It seemed almost…childish. An angry toddler with his fist in the sky.
What the hell was Mason going to do to some being that could re-shape reality? Who had created all this, who had transformed a planet and the laws of physics? Nothing. That was the cold, hard truth, and Mason was tired of lying to himself. He had to be smarter. Not like Blake, maybe, who was probably busy trying to bend the game to his own self-aggrandizement.
But maybe Mason could throw a wrench in the spanner. Just maybe he could do that. This thing wanted something, and that meant it could be…what? Negotiated with? Leveraged?
Mason had first felt it in the Devourer’s Lair when he’d broken a key to get its attention. Then again the Neutral Zone when he bent the rules and got away with it.
RoboGod wanted…drama. It wanted a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. And Mason knew he was one of the protagonists. He didn’t expect any kind of ‘plot armor’, but he knew it wanted him to go down in a blaze of glory, or to make it to the finale.
There’d be a reckoning, sooner or later, and he had to be ready. Somehow he had to be ready to ruin this story. To go against his own nature, against the influences in his mind, against any kind of logic or reason that a synthetic god would understand.
Maybe then it would at least…pause. Reflect. Listen. And then maybe everything could change. But until then he had to play along.
Streak howled, and Mason snapped back to what was in front of him.
“What is it?” He stopped and knelt beside the wolf, searching but seeing nothing obvious. Streak dug at the dirt, and Mason’s breath froze as he feared he might find remains left buried in the ground.
The wolf came up with a big, antelope-sized femur.
Mason blinked and stared, and Streak dropped it, hitting him with a ‘What? It was on the way’ kind of energy.
“I swear to Christ, Streak. Keep following the scent, and no more ‘bone stops’. She’s my friend and I thought she was dead. At least give me a little warning. No, you know what? If you do that again I’ll…”
The wolf took off with the bone and a pouty growl, and Mason’s heart started beating again. He did his best to picture himself dumping the wolf’s food in a giant garbage. Or tossing it off a cliff. But nothing seemed to have an effect, and he chased after a ‘I’m not listening’ growling Streak.