There was but an instant of time to decipher those who charged at Michael and his friends. From the blackness came dark-skinned creatures, loping and slithering and pouncing, all shapes and sizes, no beast the same as another, and none Michael had seen before. They looked like KillSims morphed into twisted, unnatural shapes with yellow eyes.
From the blinding orange light came more recognizable—if strange—characters. All of them appeared to be from famous VirtNet games: warriors with axes; fully suited astronauts with laser guns; giants with wooden clubs; a woman on a deathcat, brandishing a staff lit with fire; a mechaknight on his robotic horse; a sunpyre and his brood of white lions; the fighting priest of Grendelin; and countless others. They charged in formation, rallying behind someone who was obviously their leader.
It was a woman. Tall and powerful, decked out in all kinds of futuristic, gleaming armor, she had four arms, and four weapons. In one hand, she gripped a thick cylinder with spinning blades on the end. In another, a shaft of pure blue light, pulsing as if ready to fire. In yet another, a menacing black box with a gaping hole at one end. And the fourth arm cradled a long barrel that looked exactly like a cannon from ancient wars.
As she ran, bricks appeared beneath her, one after the other, forming a path under her feet. The rest of her army charged atop their own surfaces—flat beams of light and rocky gravel and patches of stone or grass. Their battle cries filled the air and their eyes shone with anger.
Michael took it all in, in what could only have been a few moments. Time seemed to slow to reveal one of the strangest sights he’d ever seen. He thought that it really did slow, as if the programming itself, this cesspool of countless destroyed virtual lands, wanted to witness the spectacle. Michael’s friends were still beside him, seeing what he saw, their movements sluggish, as if they were flies trapped in molasses.
And then, with a burst of wind and a screeching noise, everything ripped back to full speed.
The warriors rushed in. From one side: yellow eyes like raging fires, set in snarling and snapping, slithering and pouncing, blacker-than-black forms. From the other: heroes from decades of gaming, charging along on their magic paths. The fierce woman leading them was only a few dozen feet away from Michael and his friends, and she yelled at the top of her lungs, a sound like crushing rocks and booming thunder.
“Out of the way, pips! It’s not your day to die!”
Who were these people? Where had they come from?
Instinct took over Michael before his mind could catch up. He grabbed both of his friends, pulled them close. And then he reached out and scrambled the code, manipulating it with his mind, understanding on some deep level what he’d once done in the Hallowed Ravine. Everything around him was a fabrication, a visual manifestation of sequenced letters and numbers and symbols, including Bryson, Sarah, and himself. He attacked it all with nothing but thought.
He and his friends suddenly catapulted to the sky, three human missiles rocketing upward, just as the armies of light and darkness crashed into each other below like two out-of-control freight trains.
Michael stopped their flight several hundred feet above the clashing battle, suspended in the ethereal world of goop. His mind was a cyclone, spinning with a million thoughts, backed by a fierce rush of adrenaline through his body.
Sarah looked at him almost as if she were afraid. Of him.
“I just did what she told me to,” he said.
“Look!” Bryson shouted, pointing downward.
A couple of stragglers had separated from the battle—one a long streak of blackness with yellow eyes, the other a bulky mass with at least a dozen arms and legs. Both were coming at Michael and his friends, flying fast.
“Take us away, Superman,” Bryson said.
“Weber should be Lifting us out any second,” Sarah added.
Michael’s mind felt as if it was shutting down, as if the quick explosion of effort to code them away from the armies had sapped him of all mental strength. He halfheartedly tried to repeat what he’d done, but he knew it was hopeless as soon as he began.
“Sorry,” he muttered. “That was a one-act play, folks.”
“What in God’s name happened down there?” Sarah asked in a rush, as if they didn’t have two hideous dark beasts coming right at them, rising like heat. “Who are those people who came to help? And how did Kaine find us?”
“Maybe we can talk about it later?” Bryson yelled. “Looks like we’re going to fight after all.” He balled his fists—as if they’d do any good.
And then the creatures were on them.