Chapter 34: Knee Deep in the Dead

  “Help me find my sister, and I will show you the way out.”

  She said it like it was a fair trade. A vague promise dangled in front of a man standing knee-deep in the dead.

  A notification popped up into my HUD.

  Party Invite: Zephyra Belladrix.

  Accept? Y/N

  I stared at her, eyes flat and unimpressed and flicked the invite away. Did she seriously think I’d say yes? That I’d drop everything for a side-quest based on a hunch her sister was alive? I mean, I’d already come to the realisation that most of these aliens were dumbasses, but there was no bloody way she could really think I’d agree.

  That made me wonder what else she might want. What other angle she might be playing. If she was half as human as she looked, there was no way she’d be so honest.

  I sucked in a deep breath. The pit stank like an open graveyard in summer — rot, ammonia, old iron, and the faint whiff of something sweet. The kind of sweetness that made your teeth ache and your tummy rumble.

  I set my feet, softened my knees, ready in case this pretty alien turned ugly. My boots squelched in layers of blood-soaked fabric, and other things I wasn’t going to take too close a bloody look at.

  Most of the death down here was ancient… but I’d landed in a juicy patch.

  Zephyra watched me, eyes like green fire in the light of my champagne sabre. She shifted, resting a hand on her hip, fingers brushing the hilt of her blade. She moved with the casual readiness of someone who knew how to use it — who’d killed more than once and hadn’t lost sleep over it.

  I spun my sabre in a flourish, the burning blade ripping at the air. I wasn’t looking for a fight, but if she came looking for one, I’d end it.

  Her mouth quirked up at the corner.

  Part of me wanted to know more about her and her sister. Not out of sentiment, but because every scrap I learned about these people was another weapon in my pocket. They weren’t human, no matter how much they might look it. If the day came that I had to kill her — and I bloody knew it would — then anything I could learn here might make it easier.

  I wavered, weighing the pros and cons, thinking so quickly my damn head hurt. In the end I turned my brain off and went with my gut.

  Say what you will.

  I might be a bastard at times, but I’m not an arsehole.

  “Listen,” I said, bending down to pry a curved, glassy dagger from what used to be a four-armed insectoid. “I get it. You have someone to protect, and I’m not looking to get in the way of that. I’m not looking for a fight. But I’m not looking to borrow trouble either.”

  Faint predator-guitar chords spilled into the air like lazy taunts. A childish snicker followed. I throttled the irritation that flared bright and hot. I knew what they wanted. What they were pushing me towards. The bastards could watch and wait til they died of boredom.

  “And I’m not stupid enough to trust you,” I added, tossing the dagger up and down, end over end. “Not desperate enough either.” I flashed her a tight smile that she didn’t return.

  “You’re trapped in here,” she said, voice flat. “We will get out faster if we are together.”

  “Maybe.” I flipped the dagger and caught it again, inspecting the jagged tip. “Or I could work alone and not worry about a knife in my spine.”

  Her smile was a blade’s edge. “I have no reason to hurt you. I just want to find my sister.”

  “Lady, you’ve got a whole planet of reasons.”

  We stared each other down, it felt like the time for talking had passed. The only sounds the sizzling of fluids and crackling of bones from where my sabre had set the midden heap aflame.

  Finally, she shrugged. “Suit yourself. When you run into something you can’t handle, remember this moment.”

  “I will,” I said, turning away, tense and ready in case she took the opportunity to attack. “Give me a scream if something tries to eat you.”

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  She snorted, tossed her mane of blonde hair, and walked away without another word. Moving like a shadow, her footsteps made no sound and did not disturb the dead.

  It was bloody uncanny.

  With her gone, the pit belonged to me.

  The nearest corpses steamed faintly in my sabre’s glow. My HUD lit with loot icons like confetti. I selected Auto Loot — then deactivated it instantly. The last time I’d used the skill, I’d nearly drowned in the dead. Not again.

  This time, I mentally targeted a section of the icons and clicked the skill. To my utter astonishment, it worked perfectly. The selected bodies vanished and popped into a temporary inventory window.

  A rare mace in amongst the junk caught my eye. Its icon in my inventory looked sinister as fuck — like a shrink-wrapped head on a stick. I chucked it in with the junk, planning on converting it for BP before it could do whatever horrible thing it no doubt would.

  Priorita’s voice oozed into my ear.

  “Wow, Allan. That one is super-duper cursed! But I’m sure you’ll love it. Or it’ll eat you. Fifty-fifty.”

  “Mute commentary.”

  “No can do. Some of this is important, remember?” she sang.

  I sighed and ignored her.

  I found a rhythm — target, loot, then jump clear as the corpse pile shifted beneath me. It was mechanical work, but every now and then something shifted wrong: a pile settling too fast, a sound from somewhere deep underfoot, the flicker of movement that made me whirl about to defend.

  More than once I ended up in the depths and had to swim through the bone, blood, and gore back to the surface.

  I really hoped there was somewhere I could clean off, ‘cos I fucking reeked.

  A swarm of Prioritas buzzed in the back of my mind the whole while — complaining, arguing, blaming.

  It was pretty obvious I wasn’t meant to be able to loot the mountain of corpses. And that made me determined to harvest it all.

  Their voices grew ever more shrill as, over the course of an hour or three, I harvested thousands of bodies.

  Every now and again I’d hear a little POP and a voice would go silent… only to be replaced by another, moments later.

  A few times I thought I saw movement in the distance, a flash of blonde, and wondered where Zephyra might be. But when I looked, she was never there. She seemed as elusive as smoke.

  My inventory ballooned, making me selective of what I kept — rare gear, weird alien trinkets the rest became scrap traded for BP.

  Then my party UI caught my eye.

  I’d tweaked my interface so I could see Ariel, Paddy, and Tyler’s HP and status conditions. They’d been bouncing up and down for a while now, fighting whatever nightmares Priorita had stuffed into the temple.

  As I watched, one by one, a glowing red rune appeared beside each of their names.

  “Marked.”

  That was all. No description.

  But the rune looked like a sacrificial dagger.

  And it tied my stomach in knots.

  I’d screwed around in here for too long.

  I was at the edge of one of the pits I’d carved with auto-loot, staring down into one of the dark tunnels at its base, when a cheer went up from one of the Prioritas.

  I didn’t like the sound of it.

  I tried my looting trick again — nothing. No icons.

  A chorus of snickers, like a gang of naughty toddlers that had gotten into the jellybeans, echoed around me as dozens of Prioritas whispered congratulations to each other.

  “Oops! Looks like you can’t loot those anymore!” Said one.

  “What a surprise,” I muttered, reaching down to see if I could loot the skeleton beneath my boot the old-fashioned way. It zapped away into my inventory, but gave no items. When I inspected its description, the collection of bones was listed as a “cosmetic skeleton” that couldn’t even be recycled for BP.

  Still, I wasn’t too upset. My inventory was jam-packed with valuable loot, the construction menu BP counters fat with trash-grade points and a healthy pile of common.

  I reckon I’d won this round.

  I hesitated at the edge of the corpse pile, ready to jump down and inspect the tunnels that would hopefully take me back to my team, when something caught my eye — a glint on the minimap I’d pinned to the top of my HUD.

  One lonely icon of a lootable corpse.

  It was across the pit from me, right at the edge of my map’s radius. I jumped across the midden heap to where it lay.

  Lootable Corpse

  Sage Monarch: Level 9

  Civilisation: U’l Ciacco

  It was what remained of the stumpy, blue alien I’d seen squealing as it skydived to its death. The thing had hit the ground like a grenade, leaving a crater in the corpses and a starburst of fluorescent yellow blood that smelled like lemons.

  I looted the thing absent-mindedly, my eyes fixed on another lootable corpse only a few dozen feet away. Either I hadn’t noticed it before, or it hadn’t been there.

  I hesitated as a notification appeared in the loot window. Alongside the U’l Ciacco’s shitty weapons and armour, I also received a handful of BP — the alien’s personal stash.

  That was new, and had some concerning implications.

  I’d amassed over 15,000 trash-grade and nearly 1,000 common-grade points in my looting spree.

  Had I just painted an even bigger target on my back?

  I raised my sabre aloft, peering at the next corpse on my minimap. I had this sickening feeling, like I knew what it was — who it was — even before I approached.

  Stormsense flared, my skin prickling.

  I’d learned to trust my instincts, and at that moment they were screaming that I was being set up.

  A slim arm, pale and smooth and bent in too many places, poked from the pile of dead. A hand, mangled and missing two fingers, reached for a sky that was far, far away. Strands of blonde hair — the exact shade as her sister’s — had been torn free and caught on the ragged, broken bones.

  I knew I could walk away. Leave her here for her sister to find and mourn. That would be the smart play.

  But instead, I acted on impulse.

  I tapped her wrist with my boot and sucked the dead Lutantha into my inventory.

  I knew grief. Was familiar with regret. And had made best fucking friends with guilt.

  Sometimes the truth can set you free; other times it’ll bury you beneath its weight.

  I had enough shit on my plate to find out what it would do to Zephyra.

  Memories assaulted me.

  My grandma’s sad eyes as I held that crucifix aloft.

  The burning car.

  Elena’s screams.

  I felt it in my bones. This was a mercy.

  A breath later, the red dot of an enemy contestant appeared on my minimap.

  She was right there, at the edge of the map.

  “Fuck that…” I muttered, turning away from her, back to the pit and to the caves that lay beneath.

  I’d tread my own path.