Two Thousand and Fourteen

In this chapter Alex must trap the survivors in the final hall in order to ensure that the Guild survives and Xem needs to die.

There was panic and screaming and shouted demands from the gathered crowd, but I needed Xem to be focused on what he was saying, not thinking about his situation.

"Please proceed, honored Xem, those with the wisdom to listen will hear you," I enunciated over the din. "Ah, Alex, wizard child, I knew that my original had a reason to focus on you as he did. Indeed. I can hardly be expected to coddle you, not on the day of your graduation. Why, you should all be grown by now," Xem said. As his voice carried with arcane enchantment, most of the other survivors calmed down and listened to him via some lizard brain instinct.

"Behold!" he said and spread his arms in a wide gesture.

At first, nothing happened. Then there was a heavy grinding sound, stone against stone. I was among the first to notice first a massive cylinder, then a spiral staircase set into it descending from above. Where Xem stood, in the middle of the room, was a wide, circular open space, surrounded by lecterns and standing desks enough for the two thousand or so of us that had made it so far.

"The last task is the most simple of all. You must simply crawl out of this cave that you believe to be the whole of the Tower, and enlighten yourselves upon the majesty of the World created by the Archenarch-Mage," he said. I knew what he was waiting for, so I said:

"And what might be the catch?" I said. "How insightful of you to ask, wizard child. Your block has done particularly well in the first challenge. Your particular sector had a near 25% survival rate and I see that several monsters from the same have gained enough sapience and ability to join us here too," Xem said. "And that is a problem, I assume," I said. He spoke again as the heavy stone staircase settled into the floor behind him and the heavy iron gates began creaking open. It looked nothing like the rest of the Tower as we knew it, but instead reminded me more of an European castle, with rough granite stones and rusted iron grating.

"It is! I have it from the very highest of authorities that if an appropriate number of you had survived you could simply waltz through the gate and ascend! But rejoice, for your efficient survival has been rewarded by a gift of slaughter. The first thousand of you to ascend will survive and move on to the next challenge! The rest will disappear in here along with myself into the void that lurks between universes," Xem said.

Things changed.

Anthropologists and evolutionary psychologists have long theorized about why some people are assholes. Why so many seem willing to elbow kindly grandmothers in the face on Black Friday to get to the newest game console first, or lie to a supervisor to make a coworker look bad, or push a nerd into a locker and steal their lunch money. After all, we humans evolved as a communal species, and the social consequences should be strongly ingrained in all of us for purely self-serving reasons.

The theory that always made the most sense to me was that it was simply a good bet to go for a contested resource in an uncertain match-up of forces. If two cavemen of equal size went for the same fruit, there'd be a fight where either of them might win. If one was cautious, or polite, or compassionate and the other punched him in the face and grabbed for it however, he'd go hungry. The one to take the risk had more outcomes where he'd come out ahead than the one who thought about his fellow man and over millions of years, probably stretching back to before humans existed, this worked out often enough that these primordial assholes prospered.

You can call it first move advantage if you're into game theory. You can say 'the one who throws the first punch usually throws the last one' if you're into martial arts. You could notice that the most dangerous dictators in history are always the ones willing to take unreasonable risks, counting on nobody daring to stop them. Call it what you want, but when shit goes down, we all have an asshole in our genes, a part of us willing to push a smaller person on the ground when a bear is chasing us.

The people who rushed immediately to the center stairs weren't assholes. Not all of them, at least. I knew that feeling of desperate, clawing, human instinct to go for safety before helping others. Clara had died because of it what felt like months ago in that first cafeteria. There was a massive rush, people kicking, clawing, biting and screaming, as they surged forward and ran towards the stairs.

What I noticed was that no one from the Guild panicked. Artemis was talking in a calm, serious collected voice, raising it only to be heard:

"Listen up everyone, we can figure this out, there has to be a fair way to-" and she was elbowed in the mouth by a six-foot six man in a biker vest pushing past her. Zack and Hannah were helping her get up and the rest of the Guild was gathering up in their usual parties, trying to brainstorm a strategy. I knew it wouldn't be fast enough. The first of the survivors were within a couple of feet of the stairs, and no one was listening to us. These people were going to run, get out first and survive. They were humans, Earthlings just as I was. Frightened, panicked and so close to safety.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

I had no right to do what I did. But I had the power. Nobody could stop me. And morality was the very reason why I did what I did next.

I raised my staff above my head and I shouted the incantation for Invisible Barrier loud enough for everyone to hear. Then I expended two other castings from my staff. The barrier sealed around the spiral staircase letting no one pass. I had chosen to be part of the decision of who lives and who dies.

The first to arrive slammed into the barrier and began bashing it, but I felt little of the feedback. Panicked, lashing out by scared people just didn't transfer very much damage through the barriers and I was once more within range of Hannah so the damage was split between us. The first to notice this was, in fact, the Monarch of Goblins. They spoke in my mind and said.

"Thank you for clearing the way," and when they did so, they made a complex arcane sign with their hands and They along with the devil and the rest of the Goblin market simply teleported to the inside of the stairwell. As they ascended, I could see them disappear into a flash of white light, and knew that the number had ticked down from 1000 to around 970.

"Tsk, tsk, Alex Vorhal, that is not in the spirit of the climb. This way the most suited for survival won't make it to the second challenge," Xem said, and his voice raised above even the chaotic din of the attempted escape. He raised a hand towards me and began casting a deadly spell. I was so fucking terrified, but in what I thought would surely be my last moments, I was glad that I'd at least given the Guild a chance.

But instead of the deadly flash of Arcana, a pseudoportal appeared between myself and Xem. A voice, thousandfold more powerful than Xem's, but identical in all other ways split the hall.

"Malfunctional. Should have sent a homunculus. You know they say that if you want to do something well, you should do it yourself, but apparently even that is too much to ask for. If you're going to interfere with the legitimate strategies of my students, you may as well take the appropriate form. Now, where did I put that angel heart… ah, here it is, Niam-Actal-Thraum-Kai!"

That perfect hair-thin line that had disassembled Sergei cut through the hall of pseudoportals beyond the one in our room just like it had before, but this time it hit Xem directly in the chest. He wasn't rendered into his base components. Instead he grew bloated and twitched, and the ice crystals that had so far been hidden under the illusion/transfiguration that made him a- presumably- exact replica of the actual Yngarothrax Xem- split into shards and icicles and bloody water. He became a plane of shards of ice with sections of robe, hat and face disassembled over a thousand ice-cold razors, and then split apart and resolved once more in a nearly humanoid shape.

This Xem of Ice screamed, somehow, and it sounded nothing like our architect anymore, but a brittle, ice-cold howl. It stood again as tall as the tallest man in the room and it looked like one of those video game sprites of Xem stretched over a far too large model roughly in the shape of a strange ice elemental, but it was still dripping in blood and other organic fluids, which quickly froze in a layer over him. In the crackling pop of its voice I still recognized arcane chant, and a moment later a bead of pure ice fell among the pushing crowd behind him. It then exploded into a white cloud that reminded me of liquid nitrogen and shrapnel of ice shards and when the white cloud cleared the hundred or so people that had managed to break their way to the exit were frozen solid, dead in an instant.

Artemis screamed her orders above the gale.

"Fall back from the creature! Spread out! Ranged weapons volley!" She cried. Most people weren't listening to her, but the Guild was. Arrows and a handful of spells flew towards the monster formerly known as Xem and hit it. It didn't do much, but it turned most of the fractured parts of its face towards the guild and I hit it with a wide Greasefire. The normally Area of Effect spell hit the monster alone, and left it in the middle of a field of burning oil, at the same time discouraging others from engaging it in melee. It cast another spell, and it didn't seem to do much but blow a steam-whistle stream of white into the air from around where its ears would have been.

"Do it! Listen to her!" A man with a very heavy accent shouted. More voices joined in. Then these were followed by a few more spells. Lightning, gunshots, incantations and other projectiles filled the air as more and more people focused their ranged attacks on the monster. For its part, it finally started moving. If it walked, the fire might do some good, and it would be limited by its bulk in how quickly it could go. Instead it folded its legs underneath it and shot towards the largest concentration of people, spinning rapidly, making its shards into spinning blades. He cut a line through the opposite left section of the room, and none who stood in his way survived. Bisected corpses now covered that section of the room.

But what could have been hundreds of people had spread out at Artemis' urging. The monster cut through dozens, instantly ending lives of many more people that had somehow survived this hell for three days. And the people around it were pissed that their friends had died. Artemis didn't have to order them around anymore, as they snapped into their small-unit combat tactics that all of us had grown used to by now. People slammed mauls, hammers and axes into the ice monster, chipping away with it, cornering it, not allowing it to gain momentum for another spinning charge.

It chanted again and more ice vapor entered the room. It grew colder. At first slowly, then all at once. The temperature in the room was well below zero, as we tried harder and harder to kill it. My spells weren't great for this, though I kept throwing fire at it, side by side with Anna who was doing the same. Then we saw the first of the people nearest to the monster slow and then freeze. Then, people near it, but not in its direct line of fire turned and started running away while they could. And still it grew colder. It was now colder than I'd ever felt before and the fact that I had my bare chest out to the cold made it even worse. My eyelashes froze instantly, my nose ran and frosted over my mustache.

The creature turned and laughed. It was quite the most grating sound in the world. Then it spoke. It said simply: "Freeze then and shatter."

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