To be alone in her lair was the closest thing to relief that she could find. Alone, except for that cursed son of hers of whom she could not rid herself. She fed off his wickedness, a kind of power that sickened her even as she partook of it. But if she did not partake, she would receive instead a great hunger, a hunger of such heightened torment that even a god with an eternal will such as hers would do anything to sate it.
Imagine then what Pheobah, Queen of the Corrupted and Mother of Abomination, thought when a portal opened in her lair, right on the ground next to her outstretched porcelain feet. And on the other side of that portal was a mortal woman, clad in witch’s garb, peering in with an idiotic grin on her face.
The queen pondered what could be going on. Some rival deity laying a trap? No, she could not sense any other presence of any significance; only the stench of the human and her kind wafted through the portal.
Never mind, she thought. If this insect went to the trouble of barging in on me uninvited, she must have something foolish to say. I will receive her, and by the time she has finished blathering and begging for some favor, I will have had time to think up a proper place in hell to send her.
The queen’s son was already standing beside her and also looking very unhappy about the intrusion. Pheobah saw in his eyes that he was about to obliterate the mortal, but she put up her hand to stop him. She then walked through the portal.
D_Light was impressed with how NeverWorld rendered Queen Pheobah. His optic nerves were nearly overloaded with input as the radiant goddess stepped into the chamber. The text of his heads-up display said, You are overwhelmed with the queen’s splendor! but he scarcely needed the warning to role-play appropriately. He averted his eyes.
The dwarf was on his knees, blubbering, “Please don’t-I’ve worked for years on this character.”
D_Light looked over at Lily, who had fallen on her back. She was staring slack-jawed, and she seemed unable to breathe. D_Light decided he had better get this over with before she had an aneurysm. Although it hurt, D_Light forced himself to look directly at the unearthly face of the queen. He then took a deep breath, and with the most haughty and casual tone he could muster, he said, “You don’t look like much.”
It was at that moment that the three of them-the witch, the dwarf, and Lily’s character-were eviscerated by a blender of long, blue blades that appeared from nowhere. D_Light saw this view as his ghost left behind the explosion of blood, bone, and chunks of flesh that had been, only moments before, his female virtual body.
The queen had never felt such rage. She had been insulted, violated by a worm! Oh, how she regretted killing them so quickly, which only enraged her more. Now, out of her remote lair, the stench of mortals filled her nostrils.
“This place is crawling with vermin,” she seethed to her son, who was now smiling broadly over her statuesque shoulder. Although he loved his mother in his own way, Salem enjoyed seeing her suffer just the same.
“Truly, Mother, let us burn them,” Salem hissed lovingly in her ear.
“Take your time. Make it slow,” his mother commanded.
“I want to hear the music of their screams.”
The instant after D_Light uttered his last words as the witch Ascara, he was forcefully logged out of NeverWorld. Only a second later he heard cries of panic echoing through the halls.
“Holy Soul, it’s her!” he heard someone shouting from down the hall.
Soon there was a second voice screeching, “Run, run, run like hell!”
“Mercy, no!” pleaded a third.
Individual voices rose into a cacophony as the alarm spread, quickly becoming a chorus of pandemonium. D_Light smiled to himself, but the smile was quickly wiped from his face as he stumbled forward from a rear blow that nearly knocked the wind out him.
“Flippin’ pisser, you cost me two years of play!”
D_Light turned and blocked the next punch from the man. No longer as short as the dwarf he had been skinned as, Spookle was still plenty stocky and did not seem worried about getting charged with assault.
“No sweat, you’ll get paid!” D_Light yelled as he blocked another punch. But Spookle was not listening. He was crying with anguish as he rained down blows on D_Light.
Lily, still rubbing her eyes in an attempt to recover from the bizarre world from which she had emerged, looked over at the two men who had now been reduced to rolling around on the ground. She yelled, “Stop! Stop that or…or I will hurt you!”
“Hurt him,” D_Light panted. “He’s hurting me!”
Lily walked around the combatants for a moment, looked for her opening, and then gave a soft kick-at least it was a soft kick for her since her legs were stronger than most men’s, but what the kick lacked in force it made up for in accuracy, making perfect contact with Spookle’s scrotum.
Like a spring toy, the man immediately disengaged and rolled up in a ball, groaning. D_Light rolled away on the spongy floor and stood up. He laughed while rubbing the side of his head. “Thanks, but I could’ve taken him. I was just afraid I’d hurt him too bad and I’d have to pay restitution.”
Lily shrugged and chuckled. “I don’t even know what in Stag’s name that was about. You-you males are stark raving mad!”
It was the first time D_Light had seen Lily smile. Her teeth were unreasonably straight and white. Something told him that it was her nature to smile, or maybe it was just that he hoped to see her do it again.
As Spookle continued to writhe on the floor, the other two looked up as some distant commotion suddenly got nearer. Down the hall, running as though chased by the devil himself, mobs of spankers thundered toward them. D_Light and Lily barely had time to flatten themselves against the wall before they flew by, eyes wide, some of them shouting, although most seemed to be saving their breath for the mad dash.
Spookle’s groans of lament for his scrotum soon turned into cries of terror as he was partially stampeded by the mob. More spankers poured through the tunnel. Many more. It was like a rats’ nest set on fire. Spookle finally had the good sense to roll over next to the wall.
D_Light laughed. “My Soul, would you look at that!” He aimed his LED torch down the long tunnel behind them. Spankers were streaming into the main tunnel from countless arterials, all of them with the same agenda-to get the hell out, now!
Lily did not look amused. “What’s wrong with them? What’s going on?”
In this moment of triumph, D_Light wanted to say something clever and memorable, but there was too much noise, too many legs and arms flailing and pumping. He settled for shouting, “Let’s go!”
With that, he grabbed Lily’s hand firmly, and the pair ran into a gap in the mob, joining them. D_Light ran as fast as he could, and that was just fast enough not to get trampled because spankers were, as a rule, very fast runners. After all, NeverWorld was a physically demanding game.
The sniffer bot was guarding the nearest exit of the ghetto, so naturally, all the spankers who did not want to be fragged by the rampaging Queen Pheobah and her devil child ran straight at the bot. The bot was not designed for processing samples this quickly. Worse yet, the AI onboard was not very advanced and so was not adept at improvisation; it did not prioritize the samples taken from the people rushing past it. Having been instructed to sniff everyone who came by, that was what it did, processing the samples in order of appearance. The spankers were completely heedless of the bot’s authority, and they would have knocked it out of the air and trampled it underfoot had it not been for its sophisticated maneuvering system.
Nearly an hour passed before the bot finally found a DNA trace of the target. Being a heavily utilized tunnel-especially recently-the target would be difficult to track. Better equipment was required.
During that hour head start, D_Light held the hand of his prize and ran. Due to Rule Seven and a wish to keep his health contract dues to a minimum, D_Light had trained hard for years and was in excellent shape, but after an hour of scampering through every random side tunnel and chamber he could find in a sincere attempt to get lost, he was exhausted. Of course, he couldn’t really get lost; Smorgeous’s GPS kept him apprised of his location, and he was gratified to see that they had made some excellent progress. Presently, they were several communities away.