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

  Or, at least, I used to be.

  “Forgive me,” Glimmer said sarcastically. “Ice didn’t say it like it was a secret.”

  “It isn’t,” I shot back quickly, feeling the need to defend my little makeshift family, “but that isn’t the point.” I glared at her as we continued to walk. “And his name is Barry.”

  “Yeah. He told me that. It’s not like your life was the only one we talked about. He told me about his own life, about what happened to his mother.”

  I blanched. Barry’s mother’s addiction problems had been an issue he’d dealt with for years. I had been right there with him, through the bad and then the really bad. By the end, she was barely a person anymore, and when we laid her to rest, I saw a Barry I had never seen before. He was strong. He was composed. He was freaking stalwart for his family. In fact, seeing Barry be like that was so much of an inspiration to me that it was part of the reason I did what I thought was right when Amanda got pregnant.

  Of course, I never told Barry that. It wasn’t the kind of thing you said to your bro. Maybe he knew though, and maybe he'd told Glimmer.

  “We don’t talk about what happened to his mother,” I mumbled, swallowing hard.

  “You don’t,” she corrected. “He was quite open about it, actually.”

  “You know, where do you get off?” I asked, turning and coming to a sudden and complete stop. “You can’t go from zero to sixty like that. You can’t go from not wanting to know Barry’s real name to talking to him about his dead mother, and you sure as hell don’t get to tell me how to live my life.” I shook my head. “Don’t think I didn’t notice the fact that we still don’t know anything about you!”

  I looked at her, disgust filling me. “I bet you’re some spoiled princess who doesn’t know what a day’s work looks like. I bet you’re just a silly little girl who’s never had to make a hard decision in her pampered little life. Is that why you want to know about us, about what we’ve been through?” I scoffed. “Go back to your castle, princess.”

  There were a few beats of silence before she spoke, enough for me to know what I said had affected her in a real way.

  “You have no idea what my life has been like, and you have no idea what I have or have not told Ice. You think because I wanted to keep things private I don’t have anything to talk about, that I don't care? I should be so lucky. If you had any idea what my year has looked like, what my day has looked like, for that matter, your greasy hair would curl, you self-righteous, son of a-”

  A loud howl broke through her words, and I watched her shudder and heard her gasp. She obviously recognized the sound and its origin.

  “What is that?” I asked, looking around. “What does it mean?”

  “It means a lot of things,” she answered. “Chief among them, we’re fucked.”

  8

  My stomach dropped right to the heels of my feet. Glimmer had told me about these twisters, about the way they ripped the Avenging Angels apart and sent them to the four corners of this hellish place. They were the reason the team was scattered to the winds right now. They were the reason I couldn’t just push the entire group to the pool of whatever and jump back up to the Surface Level.

  And here it was again.

  “Damnit,” I muttered, looking around the still vacant plains and trying to prepare myself to haul ass away from this thing. The howls were still ripping through the area, so much so I could barely hear myself think.

  Glimmer grabbed my hand and pulled me forward. It took me by surprise. Glimmer wasn’t the type of player who dealt with a lot of body contact. She kept her distance for the most part, never using any emotes or commands that would imply contact. Pretty much the only exception to that was the few healing spells that had animations that forced it. She was too good of a healer to throw away useful abilities based on her hang-ups.

  Of course, touching was an entirely different thing now that I was inside the game. Whereas Glimmer probably felt nothing more than the jiggle of her controller as she grabbed me, I felt her, well, her avatar at any rate. I felt her hand as I took it. I felt her breath as she looked at me, screaming something I couldn’t hear over the noise. I felt my own heartbeat, fast and furious, and I was certain hers matched it.

  This wasn’t a game to me anymore. It hadn’t been for a while. It was real. I was really in danger and had a job to do.

  I pulled up my inventory tab and rifled through my possessions as we rushed forward, toward what I could only assume was the direction away from a storm system I still couldn’t see. Finally, I pulled up my Energy Blockers. They looked like a pair of shoulder pads, except they were gold and etched with symbols meant to shield me from the ambient energy that could do me harm. I thought they were a stupid buy when Barry told me all the Avenging Angels had to own a pair, but I wanted to get in good with these guys, so I played along.

  It was a good thing I did too. The roaring noise had been slowly eating at the edge of my Energy, not enough to cause any real damage past my natural regeneration, but enough to make me wary. I had hoped that it was from an environmental source, something the Blockers would protect me from. It would mean that they would shield me from this horrible noise.

  I slipped them on and, luckily, it turned out I had been right. Instantly, the howling reduced to little more than an annoying siren song.

  “You stupid son of a-”

  “That’s uncalled for, isn’t it?” I asked, cutting through Glimmer’s words.

  “Finally,” she said with a start, still holding my hand, still pulling me forward. “I’ve been trying to get you to put the Blockers on since forever.”

  Okay. It had only been about thirty seconds since the howling had gotten too loud for Glimmer and me to hear each other, so she definitely hadn’t been trying ‘since forever.’ But I got it. I should have caught on a little quicker. At least, we were both wearing them now, and that meant we’d be able to communicate.

  “Where is it?” I asked, surveying the horizon, even slipping on my Piercing Goggles so I might be able to see things that have been mystically hidden. There was nothing, no sign of shielding, no sign of anything. “Wait a second! Is the storm invisible?”

  “No!” she scoffed. “What is it with you and things being invisible?”

  I blinked, still running. “I can’t see the damn thing. What am I supposed to think?”

  “That it’s not here,” she answered without missing a beat.

  “Not here?” I was obviously more than a little confused. Of course, it was here. I could hear it. If it wasn’t here, what the hell were we running from?

  “I don’t know why, but they’re not like regular storms,” she huffed. “It doesn’t come at you the way a normal storm does, from above.”

  “What are you getting at?” I asked, trying to myself calm. “All storms come from above. It’s where weather happens.”

  “Not here. Not in this place. Everything is turned around. Everything is different.”

  “Turned around? If the storms don’t come from above, then where do-”

  The ground shattered in front of us as a whirling sinkhole appeared inches from us. Glimmer pulled to a stop quickly, jerking me backward. She stood still for just a beat, watching the tornado emerge from the ground, spinning with sand and crackling blue energy.

  “From below,” I muttered, looking at the mammoth storm system. “It comes from below.”

  Back home, this thing wouldn’t have been nearly as impressive. It certainly wouldn’t have been scary, at least not in the traditional sense. It would have been a few inches tall on the other side of a computer screen. I wasn’t back home, though, and this thing was the size of a building, whirling and violent, powerful and angry as it pushed toward us, picking up sand as it moved.

  “Come on!” Glimmer yelled, pulling me backward again.

  “What the fuck?” I asked breathlessly.

  My Energy was still fine but my heart was racing, and I was ‘piss your pants’ scared about this thing. Storms had always been a particular bone of contention with me, ever since I was a kid, lying in bed wide awake as thunder clapped. I couldn’t deal with it then, and it didn’t get much better as I was growing up. Now my nightmare was right in front of me, nipping at my heels as I ran hand in hand with Glimmer.

  “We need to get out of its path,” I suggested, not bothering to look over at her. “Just let it pass by.”

  “That’s not going to work,” she yelled back at me, straining to be heard over the storm. “We tried that last time. It was how it caught us. This thing doesn’t run in some pattern. It targets. It moves when we do, like an animal going after its prey.”

  The truth of that settled on my mind for a moment. A killer storm that could pop up, sight unseen, from anywhere. It was intense and intent on finding me. When it did, it would rip me away from anyone I was with, leaving me completely alone.

  It was like all my fears had been compressed into one horrible thing. The only thing the storm was missing was a female voice saying that it ‘happens to all guys’ and that it’s ‘like, totally not a big deal. Maybe we can just watch a movie’.

  “We need to think of something,” I said, my mind racing every bit as fast as my feet. “Certainly, there’s a spell you can use or an artifact. Do you have a Teleportation Rune?”

  “You know very well I do not have a Teleportation Rune,” she growled. “You know how I feel about those things.”

  “You’re so weird,” I muttered. “What are we supposed to do then?”

  “This,” she said. Pulling to a stop again, she turned toward the storm. I jerked to a stop myself, still holding her hand. “Use the hug emote on me,” she commanded. “The sustained one.”

  “What?” I asked, my heart skipping a beat.

  “Don’t flatter yourself,” she grimaced. “You might suck, but you’re better than being by myself down here. We need to stick together, and there’s no way we’re going to be able to outrun this thing. The only chance we’ve got is if we’re physically bound when it hits.” She nodded firmly. “Now hurry up. It’s almost here!”

  I did what she said, pressing my body against hers and wrapping my arms around her tightly. Being actually in the world, I had a lot more control of my avatar, er, body than normal players, so it wasn’t exactly like the canned hug animation. It would do the job, though. Much like before, where I was sure all she could feel was the jolt of the controller, I could feel everything. I felt her curves. I felt her warmth. I felt her heart beating fast under ample breasts.

  "Damn, you really are gorgeous, aren't you?" she asked right in my ear.

  "What?" I stammered.

  "Not you, idiot," she said. "Your avatar. Looking at him this close up, he's hot as hell."

  "Thank you," I said, instinctively.

  "It's not a compliment for you, moron," she said. "You might as well take credit for Leonardo DiCaprio being hot too."

  Her own avatar’s eyes scanned over my body. "Yeah. Look at you." Though limited by the emote system that left her arms locked in the sustained hug animation, I had the distinct feeling Glimmer would be running her hands across my body if she could, every inch of it.

  The breath caught in my throat and my heart sped up. I looked down at her breasts, heaving against my own chest. I wondered how she would feel if I started running my hands all over her too, well, if she were actually in this world to feel those kinds of things … or would her controller start rumbling again for a different reason?

  “Listen,” I said as the breath caught in my throat. “If this does tear us apart, there’s something I need to tell you.”

  “Don’t get all sentimental, jackass.” Her voice was softer though, and I felt her body rise against me.

  “It’s not that,” I answered honestly. Turning, I saw the storm was a second or two away from hitting us. “If you find Barry before I do, you tell him I’m here. You tell him I’m really here.”

  “Of course, you are.”

  “No. Just shut up and listen. If you guys can get out of here without me, you go. Tell Barry to find Ori. She’ll explain everything.”

  “Ori?” Glimmer asked. “The NPC angel chick with the armored thong?”

  “There’s no time,” I said, looking back at the storm and tightening my hold on Glimmer. “Just hold onto me.”

  I flinched right before I felt the tornado hit.

  9

  The tornado hit quickly. I felt Glimmer push herself against me even tighter somehow, her hands digging into my back frantically. I was starting to think that avatars did some things instinctively, like some kind of base line animal intellect below the active control players had on them. The world twisted and turned, disappearing into a sea of crackling blue energy and wind. Thank God for the Blockers Glimmer and I had put on just seconds before because, without them, I could only imagine how rough and tumble this would have been.

  Even with them on, I felt like a rag doll being tossed around by children who didn’t think or care how I might have felt about the whole thing.

  My muscles tensed, my eyes shut instinctively, and my throat went dry as I opened it to speak. “You okay?” I yelled at Glimmer.

  Her voice startled me when she answered. “No. I’m not okay. This goddamn tornado again. It’s like, I’m so frustrated with this game. It’s enough already!”

  Her tone was annoyed but calm; in sharp contrast to the sound of my own voice. I was in the middle of all of it. I was actually being thrown around haphazardly, and I’d actually feel the pain when my body finally hit against something hard.

  If Glimmer gleaned any of this from my tone, she didn’t mention it. Instead, I heard the crunch of potato chips through her headset. She was eating again. Suddenly, I felt very jealous of her.

  “God, I wish this thing would go faster,” she mused, still annoyed. “At least it looks like we’re sticking together this time. Last time, I had already lost contact with the entire team at this point. Well, the entire team minus you, I guess.” She sighed heavy. “What the hell were you talking about back there anyway? Saying you were really here? Is that some kind of philosophical thing? Because if it is, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Just saying.”

  “Glimmer!” I shouted, my throat tight, my head pounding and my legs assaulted by the crackling blue energy which was right under foot. “Can we possibly talk about this after we go through the giant tornado?”

  “Geez,” she muttered through a mouthful of potato chips. “You don’t have to be so touchy. God, it’s like I can’t win with you people.” I could practically hear her shaking her head. “First I get called over to the side and told about how distant I’m being and about how nobody likes me.” She slipped into our leader Ember’s voice; all gruff and gravely. “Get to know people. Don’t be so prickly all the time.”

  “Prickly is a kind word for it,” I muttered through the pain and swirling discomfort around me.

  “Whatever. So, I tried to talk to everybody, and now that’s not good enough either. I don’t know what you guys want from me.”

  I had no idea that Ember had come to her about her conduct. I just assumed we were the way we were. The team had a certain dynamic, and I figured that, as the last person recruited, I needed to make myself okay with it. If that meant allowing myself to become the butt of Glimmer (or someone else’s) joke, that was fine by me. I would have rather been hazed a little and in the Angels then left to my own devices.

  Still, if Ember said something, it must have been a running theme. Maybe she had always been like this. Maybe the rest of the team didn’t have the same sort of ‘brush it off your shoulder’ mentality I did about the whole thing.

  Suddenly, a feeling of sadness ran through me. You know, along with all the pain. She was trying. In her own way, Glimmer was attempting to open up, something that apparently wasn’t very easy for her. I hated the idea of her feeling like a failure in that regard. Although, since I was about a heartbeat away from becoming a splatter against some sharp rock in hell, I decided my needs were a little more important.

  “I want you to hold on tight, and if I shatter something that looks important when I fall, I want you to heal me,” I ordered, possibly unnecessarily. Glimmer knew how to do her job, of course, but with her emotional outburst, I wanted to make sure she was focused.

  I should have known better though. My sister never liked it when I did that either.

  “You suck. Do you know that?” she said, her voice pitched up an octave or two.

  “How could I forget, seeing as how you keep telling me?”

  The wind picked up and then, completely out of nowhere, changed direction. We went from swirling to the right to pulling immediately to the left. My neck snapped with the change. Pain, fresh and raw, shivered up and down my spine from the whiplash. I screamed. Yep. That was going to have to be fixed.

  “Stop being a baby,” Glimmer said, her tone still unaffected. “I’ll patch you up good as new once we land.”

  She was, after all, probably lying in bed somewhere. Who cared if an avatar’s neck snapped when you can put it right back together? Well, the answer to that question happens to be; the poor bastard who feels every bit of it. That’s who.

  “And I only remind you because that’s our thing,” she added.

  “That’s our thing?” I hissed out through clenched teeth, hurt running up and down me. “You calling me ‘as worthless as a wet parachute during a freefall’ is our thing?”

  She sighed. “Look. You rib me. I rib you. I thought you could take it.”

  “I-I can take it,” I stammered.

  “Maybe you should tell that to Ember then because he certainly thinks differently.”

  Suddenly my pride hurt as much as my neck. I wasn’t some prissy little baby who needed to be coddled, and I didn’t need our guild leader to come to my rescue like I was some cat stuck up a tree. I was Iron Jack, for fuck’s sake. That might not have meant as much yesterday as it did now, but I was my own man. I didn’t need Ember fighting battles for me.