Escape from Hell: A LITRPG Adventure (Kingdom of Heaven Book 2) Read online

  “I need help and who am I sent? The most useless person this side of the Mississippi.”

  “There is no Mississippi in this game,” I shouted, narrowing my eyes and feeling that familiar twinge of irritation that came anytime I was with her.

  “I’m talking about the river,” she answered, sighing loudly as she turned her gaze back to me.

  “There’s no Mississippi River in the game either, Glimmer,” I grumbled. Not that it mattered. According to the Mountain, all I had to do was kill her, and I could get out of here. I could go back to the Upper Levels and take the Shadow’s head off. Hopefully, that would be enough to set things right.

  Luckily, Glimmer wasn’t like me. She wasn’t stuck in the game. So, I could kill her annoying ass and her in-game soul would travel back to the Valley of Rebirth while her actual self was comfy and free in a dorm in Denver somewhere. Hell, at this very moment she was probably stuffing her face full of Cheetos and wondering what kind of job she could get with the Fine Arts degree she was working on.

  Here’s a hint. It involves asking people if they’d like fries with something.

  “So, I just need to kill her then?” I asked, looking over at the Mountain.

  She nodded at me as the black rivets in her otherwise unblemished skin moved and danced, rearranging with the actual mountain. “Her death wins your freedom,” she answered flatly.

  “Wait a second, you waste of space!” Glimmer said, moving far enough to the edge of the mountain that one more step would cause her to fall. “You can’t kill me. It’s more complicated than that.” She shook her head again, her braid bouncing around her chest, covered with ragged brown pelts. “And you sound weirdly clear through these headphones.”

  “That’s because I’m not using my microphone,” I answered, steeling myself and starting toward the mountain. As I moved closer, the mountain shifted again, steps appearing to clear my path to Glimmer.

  She looked at them, huffing as she saw what was going on. “What? You get like a Bluetooth or an external microphone or something?””

  “Or something.” I decided I was better off not sharing my current predicament with her.

  It was strange. I had spent so long trying to get in touch with someone I knew from the outside world, and now that I had, I didn’t want to tell her what was going on. I had been through too much. Circumstances had changed in a way that made it feel unnecessary. Besides, it wasn’t like this was Barry. If my best friend was standing in front of me, I would feel more comfortable letting him in on all the craziness I had just been through.

  He wouldn’t believe it, of course, and I wouldn’t blame him for that. It was a wild story, and if I woke up right now to find myself lying face down in my own bed back home with a puddle of drool on my pillow, it wouldn’t surprise me. But I wouldn’t do that. This was real, and no amount of hemming or hawing about it was going to change that. I needed to fix things, to get back up to the surface realm and make things right.

  The only thing standing in my way was Glimmer and, luckily for me, she had just called me a waste of space. That was all the motivation I needed to send her digital ass back to the Valley of Rebirth.

  I pulled the Sword of Justice from my scabbard and watched as it glinted in the light. Considering the Power I still had from my battles above and my Ability to break the usual Level Cap, this would be a walk in the park.

  “Oh, come on!” Glimmer said, shaking her head at me. “You’ve got to be kidding. How the hell did you even get down here in the first place, Iron Jack? And how the hell are you over Level 50?” she asked as I bridged the gap between us, climbing the stairs with one thing on my mind. “Last we heard from you, your piece of shit PC had gone on the fritz. Between that and” – there was an uncomfortable pause as she looked in vain for an escape – “you going AWOL, we had no clue when we would see you again. It’s been over a week!”

  I knew it had been a while, but that put things into clear perspective for me. Every moment mattered, not only to fix things here in the Kingdom of Heaven but in the real world as well. I still held a faint hope that, if I fixed this in a timely fashion, I could return to the world I’d left and see my sister and nephew again. Of course, that meant putting my sword right through Glimmer’s chest which, come to think of it, had been something I had wanted to do for quite some time now.

  Who says you can’t have fun in hell?

  “I got tricked,” I answered flatly, still marching toward her.

  Glimmer was put off by my non-answer, but her wit recovered quickly. “You don’t say,” she sneered back at me. “Someone of your immense intelligence got duped. Who could have imagined?” Her eyes flickered down to my sword. “You need to put that away. You don’t have any idea what’s going on here.”

  "You know, I'm smarter than you think," I said, glaring at her. She might have just been digital in her world but, in this one, she was every bit flesh and blood, and that flesh was tan, taut, and covered in sweat at the moment. I swallowed hard looking her over, reminding myself how much I hated her.

  "I guess you'd have to be," she answered, “but you still have no clue what’s going on and how much you will screw things up if you kill me.”

  A flicker of indignation sparked inside of me. I didn’t know what was going on here? Was that a joke? She was the one in the dark about things. It was Glimmer who couldn’t possibly have a clue as to the truth of this place or what I’d been through in it.

  “Just stand still,” I answered, moving up the steps on my way to her. “This won’t take long, and then you can do your nails or something while you regenerate.”

  A flash of familiar anger settled on her face, and my heart lit up a little at the sight of it. I didn’t know why I did that. I wasn’t that type of guy, the hopelessly old fashioned, out of date type of guy who thinks a woman has nothing better to do than blow dry her hair and wait for a guy to call. How could I? I had basically given up my life so my sister wouldn’t have to spend hers trying to work herself out of a ‘single mother’ trap.

  It was just around Glimmer, only when she was there, that this flared up in me. There was something about pissing her off, about watching her react, that gave me way more joy than it should have.

  “You Neanderthal son of a bitch,” she muttered. “The only thing I’d do with my nails is to sharpen them enough to claw your black heart out. Now shut up and listen.”

  “No thanks,” I answered as I got close enough to her to strike. While I was getting pretty good with Natural Magic and my handy Lightning Bolt, Glimmer’s magical Attunements were still higher than mine. Not so with hand-to-hand fighting, though.

  I swung my sword. As soon as I did, I knew the strike was wide. In my cocksureness, I had underestimated Glimmer’s finely honed ‘get the hell out of the way’ Ability. Healers had to have it; the bad guys hated it when the heroes they were trying to eat suddenly got all their wounds eliminated. With a quick turn, she maneuvered around me and my blade. I pulled up to swing again, only to be encased in a shimmering magical bubble.

  Glimmer casts Holy Recluse! You have been trapped to allow you time to repent for your sins!

  It was an Anchorite Attunement spell, Holy Recluse, that put monsters into their own personal time-out. Anchorites were the opposite of Heretics, one of the Shadow’s Attunements, divine healers who used the powers of the Principalities. Glimmer used this Holy Recluse thing when things got hot and heavy, either to save her bacon long enough for we fighters to bail her out or to put a particularly powerful creature in a corner long enough to heal our wounds. Considering I would definitely be classified as a particularly powerful creature in this instance, I knew why she used it.

  Unfortunately for her, I had kind of transcended anything she had faced above. Maybe it was that little bit of the Principalities’ Power still in me or just my stupidly advanced Level, but I crashed through the Recluse bubble like it was made of soap.

  She let out a faint curse as I turned, chasing after
her.

  As soon as her heels hit the steps, they started moving the other way as if to bring her back to me. The Mountain really wanted me to kill this chick. She had like a glacier-sized hard on for Glimmer blood.

  My mind flashed back to the Jackal, and the last time someone in this damn game wanted me to kill another person this badly. It had led me to murder Aaron, to actually kill him. That couldn’t happen this time though. Glimmer wasn’t really here. She was back at home. I couldn’t hurt her the same way I’d hurt Aaron. It was a win/win.

  “Damn it!” she screamed as the steps moved in reverse.

  I stopped walking, letting the steps deposit me onto the cliff to wait for her to get there too. I reared back my sword and took careful aim. A strike to the neck should do her in. Calmly, I waited for her to finally give up on her impossible quest to run away.

  The steps were moving quicker now, so fast that she was running in the opposite direction and was still being brought back to me.

  Finally, she turned, looking me in the face.

  “You don’t get it, Iron Jack,” she said, her eyes wide and expectant. “If you kill me, that’s it. My character is stuck here. All the Angels are stuck here, and if you insist on doing this, none of us will ever get out.”

  3

  When the words left Glimmer’s mouth, they stopped the swing of my sword completely. A flash of Aaron ran through my head again. He had been innocent in this entire thing, a person plucked out of his own world just like me. I had killed him because I hadn’t taken the time to stop and listen to what he had to say. Was I about to do the same thing again?

  “Do it!” the Mountain said, perhaps noticing the apprehension on my face now.

  My sword stayed steady in my hands as the moving stairway deposited Glimmer right in front of me. She stood there, wide eyes accusing me of acting too quickly or moving too fast without discretion.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked, ignoring the Mountain’s command for the moment. “Are you here?” I swallowed hard. “Are you really here?”

  “If you ever wish to return to the place from which you came, you will do as I ask,” the Mountain declared. The rivets on her blank body moved again, and the ground underfoot lifted me up. I stood taller than Glimmer now, much taller, and I couldn’t help but notice that at this angle I’d have an easy and direct path at her throat. It would be a kill shot, and that wasn't a coincidence.

  “She's lying to you,” Glimmer said, motioning to the Mountain. “She won’t let you out of here. She told me the same thing, said if I climbed this thing, she’d let me out. She was a really hot dude then, by the way. I got stuck in here though, trapped in some chamber with some sort of giant snake creatures I’ve never seen in the game before. I had to blow through half my supplies just to keep myself from dying.”

  “Why’d you do that?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at her. “If you want to get out of here, why not just get yourself killed and regen up in the Valley?”

  “These questions only serve to prolong your tenure here and put the people you care about at greater risk,” the Mountain reminded me.

  She wasn’t wrong. I wasn’t like Glimmer. I didn’t have the luxury of taking my time here, of seeing what was up, or exploring a land I’d never seen before and hopefully never would again. The Shadow was up on the Surface realm, probably twisting the Kingdom of Heaven into something horrific before undoubtedly placing himself on the seat of power in that world.

  My stomach churned at the idea of what he might do to Ori and Hecate. Those women might have been instrumental in bringing me here and, as such, responsible for the flaming shit show my life had turned into as of late, but we had also fought side by side. We had been with each other through all of it, and I cared about them. Okay, so I cared about Ori in a special ‘tingle in your chest and your pants’ sort of way, but I cared about them both and didn’t want to see anything bad happen to them. What if I was too late though? Or what if the Mountain was right and these questions would stop me from being able to save them?

  It didn’t matter. As much as I wanted to save them, I couldn’t have another person’s death on my shoulders. If Glimmer was actually here, it meant she was going through the same thing Aaron and I had. And not just here. She said none of them could leave.

  Lord, what if the entire Avenging Angels team had gotten pulled into here?

  If that was the case, this had just gotten an entire world of worse. It meant that not only was the entire civilization known as the Kingdom of Heaven counting on me to save them but my guild was too.

  I swallowed hard, unsure of how to proceed or what even was more important right now. I knew I couldn’t kill Glimmer, not if she was really here. So, I repeated my question, this time rearing back with my sword again to prove I meant business.

  “Why not go back to the Valley, Glimmer? Why are you staying here?”

  “No!” the Mountain yelled as Glimmer opened her mouth to answer. As she did, a loud rumble sounded, not only from her mouth but from the actual mountain itself.

  Glimmer was right. This thing was trying to hide something from me. She didn’t want me to hear Glimmer’s answer which meant that the answer would probably stop me from ending her (in-game) life.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, looking at her as I pulled down my Notifications bar. Maybe there was some new quest or a massive change in things that I had perhaps missed somehow.

  “He, she, whatever, lies, Iron Jack,” Glimmer said, and the ground under us began to shake. “Damn it! I hate it when the controller does this.”

  The controller! She was talking about the shaking mechanism that activates whenever there was a rumble or a hit inside of the game. I always used the PC version so I never really dealt with that and didn’t have an opinion on the feature, but that didn’t matter. If she was feeling the controller shake, it meant she had it in her hand. It meant she was on earth and decidedly not in the Kingdom of Heaven. It meant I was wrong.

  That made my decision a hell of a lot easier.

  I swung quickly, using the shaking and the way it had distracted her to my advantage. She was looking at the Mountain as I struck.

  The shaking messed with my accuracy though, and instead of the kill shot, I only slammed the sword against her arm.

  She stumbled backward, a third of her Energy falling away with the attack.

  She looked up at me, her eyes wide and her mouth set in anger. “Hey, micro penis! What the hell are you doing? I told your stupid ass not to attack me.”

  There, in that one instance, stood an example of the stark contrast of my situation and Glimmer’s. If I’d have just lost a third of my Energy in one go, I’d be wincing through a shit ton of pain right now. Glimmer wasn’t here, not really, so all she had to face was a bruised ego and a controller that probably vibrated a little stronger.

  “Sorry, Glimmer,” I answered, rearing back again. “There’s a lot of stuff going on here that you don’t understand.” I swung again, but she ducked, rolling and popping back up on the other side of me. The Mountain was still shaking. Rocks began to slide down from the top, some as big as those Temple of Doom boulders Indiana Jones had such a problem with.

  A large one came right at us, and I stared at Glimmer.

  “This is your fault,” she said as we both jumped over it, our timing pretty much perfect at this point.

  “My fault?” I asked as we landed back against the still shaky mountainside. “If you’d just let me kill you, this would all be over with.”

  “Not true, dumbass,” Glimmer said as we ducked and dodged smaller stones that came rolling our way. “If I let you kill me, then that’s the end of the Avenging Angels, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let my guild end like that just because you want to be a jackass.”

  The end of the Angels? That didn’t make any sense. Even if she died, she could always wait for the others to get out of here. Something wasn’t adding up. Which, of course, meant I didn’t have the whole
story.

  I sighed. I should be used to that by now.

  “It’s something about this realm, isn’t it?” I asked, pushing her out of the way of a boulder that would have crushed her. Ten seconds earlier, I would have let nature take its course and end her, but I needed to know what was really going on here and I couldn’t do that with a smooshed Glimmer.

  “It works differently,” she confirmed. “When we got here and saw that this wasn’t the Upper Levels, we tried to head back. I mean, not everyone wanted to. Ice had a hard on to explore this place, but we took a vote and decided it was best to leave.”

  I grinned. Ice was Barry’s in-game name. It was just like him to find himself in Hell and want to take a walk around. “When we tried though, we found the portal was sealed. We walked for ages in this awful place until we met a wandering merchant in the desert willing to barter information for gold pieces, about the only normal thing we’ve seen down here. Luckily, I happened to have more than enough to pay his fee.”

  I grinned again. Glimmer might have been a hard ass, but she had always been a prepared hard ass.

  “He told us the only way out of this place was for us to reach something called the Peering Pool.” I mentally scrolled through my knowledge of the game and came up empty. I had never heard of anything called that. That wasn’t that surprising; this was territory only hinted at and content no one else had been to as far as I knew. “He said we all had to be together though, said that everyone who went through the portal must be present to go back through the Pool or it wouldn’t let us through.”

  The ground was still rumbling underfoot, growing ever more furious as the Mountain roared below us. More and more boulders kept coming, and they became harder to dodge.